Directed by:
Guillermo del ToroCinematography:
Guillermo NavarroComposer:
Ramin DjawadiCast:
Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Max Martini, Robert Kazinsky, Clifton Collins Jr., Robert Maillet, Diego Klattenhoff, Ron Perlman (more)VOD (1)
Plots(1)
When legions of monstrous creatures, known as Kaiju, started rising from the sea, a war began that would take millions of lives and consume humanity's resources for years on end. To combat the giant Kaiju, a special type of weapon was devised: massive robots, called Jaegers, which are controlled simultaneously by two pilots whose minds are locked in a neural bridge. But even the Jaegers are proving nearly defenseless in the face of the relentless Kaiju. On the verge of defeat, the forces defending mankind have no choice but to turn to two unlikely heroes - a washed up former pilot (Charlie Hunnam) and an untested trainee (Rinko Kikuchi) - who are teamed to drive a legendary but seemingly obsolete Jaeger from the past. Together, they stand as mankind's last hope against the mounting apocalypse. (official distributor synopsis)
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Reviews (16)
Godzilla meets Transformers. Pacific Rim is the most honest of this summer’s blockbusters, as it doesn’t pretend to be anything it isn’t and avoids narrative feints and overlapping meanings in straightforwardly bringing very clear content to the term “high concept” (Monsters! Robots! And they’re really big!). (With respect to the anticipated hurricane of merchandising, the fetishisation of technology present in the film deserves special analysis – the characters repeatedly marvel at the power and size of the robots as the camera revels in their design in long shots, which are in some ways reminiscent of the presentation of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park). The plot puts us in familiar positions as viewers, as it is composed of popular sci-fi and military motifs (Earth in peril, neural linking, clones, male rivalry, the best defence is offence). All it requires from us is that we somewhat unthinkingly and completely contentedly watch modified versions of Top Gun, Cloverfield, Independence Day and Hellboy (for connoisseurs, there is a bonus in the form of the Blade Runner-esque neo-noir visual aspect of Hong Kong and a rather inappropriate reference to the famous “nose” scene from Chinatown). Given that its marketing campaign made it very clear what it was going to be about (and that it wouldn’t be about much more than that), Pacific Rim’s lack of originality did pose an obstacle to my enjoyment of the pure entertainment that it provided. The predictability of the plot twists and the restricting of the human element (manifested in the hunky actors who, with the exception of Elba, are interchangeable and uncharismatic) to the necessary minimum – after all, the concept of the Jaeger is based on the “transformation” of humans into a multi-ton steel monster (or an analogy for the cooperative playing of action-oriented games) – make room for a visual and visceral action experience. The heavyweight matches are clear and varied to the extent possible, but they are mainly huge. It’s a dream come true for gamers and comic-book fans. Guillermo del Toro plays like a little boy on a grand scale. I enjoyed the film – not intellectually, but intensely – especially because of its imaginativeness and the sensory experience provided by the combination of the film’s incredible visual aspect and its rock soundtrack. 75%
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A new movie about an invasion by toerags from another dimension which, instead of NGE (the blues know what I’m talking about), is more similar to Emmerich’s version of Godzilla, eighties style. Guillermo has a lot of strong sides and one (and for the purposes of a summer popcorn movie - fundamental) weakness: he is simply no good at action. Under his directing action turns into a succession of clichés and wonderfully arranged images with no dynamism, inner tension, build up or clarity. No wonder that the most successful movies of his career are those with no action. Despite this handicap, he decided to make a movie based purely on action in massive dimensions. And... And certainly this didn’t turn out to be that proverbial exception that proves the rule, but simply solid Bayism with nice visuals, which might just break the iceberg of racist xenophobia so common in this country. After watching this, every little boy will want to have a little Gypsy Woman figurine on his bedside table.
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Del Toro brings us something that has been done before. After all, big cities have already been devastated by The Avengers, Transformers, or Superman to the point that falling skyscrapers are becoming a bit of a stereotype. The director tries to add personality to it by providing some pretty clear action scenes, and by not going too far over the edge in terms of visual sweeps. On the other hand, into two hours he didn't cram in a single major character, a real character who could pull carry better than a jaeger pulling a tin can down the street. Idris Elba has charisma but drowns in pathetic speeches, and the rest of the ensemble is severely uninteresting - Ron Perlman is more of an iconic trademark than a functional character. It goes by quickly, but the most important and impressive scene is still the escape of little Mako from the kaiju through the empty street.
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Del Toro serves up pure-blooded mecha anime in live-action form with a properly intensified wow effect. Nevertheless, it is necessary to realise that Pacific Rim is primarily intended to work as a presentation of the mecha genre for the mainstream western audience. Therefore, if we look for adequate equivalents to the film in anime, then we definitely cannot go to the extremes of the genre such as the psychological-existential-theological curiosity Neon Genesis Evangelion or the spectacular self-reflexive and genre-caricature madness of Gurren Lagann. Pacific Rim is rather an equivalent of the genre’s pioneering titles that gets by with an honestly straightforward story and is built primarily on the novelty (in the context of Hollywood blockbusters) of its basic concept of spectacular battles between giant robots and giant monsters. People who have had a brush with anime, or rather Japanese pop culture in general, and have seen a handful of the most highly acclaimed and thus also completely exceptional titles can lament the fact that, in terms of characters and their dramatic arcs as well as the complexity of the given world, there are better mecha films than the first American blockbuster venturing into the vast expanses of the genre. But let’s bear in mind that the purpose was not to make an equivalent of Evangelion, but simply to make the first-ever live-action mecha film that wouldn’t have the form of papier-mâché tokusatsu movies and series, but would be an epic hyper-realistic spectacle in which the main attractions are the dimensions and proportions of the mechs. Similarly as in the case of Hellboy, del Toro doesn’t offer a distinctive interpretation of the existing tradition, but he gets by with fannish enthusiasm over the fact that he got to play with his dream action figures. _____ Regarding the film’s revenues and reception: Based on opening weekend box-office receipts in the US, some predicted a sad fate for the film, but several weeks after its release, Pacific Rim has proven to be a project that isn’t oriented primarily toward the American audience, as it has strong international potential, especially in Asia. During its opening weekend in South Korea, it captured 44.3% of the audience (i.e. 1,160, 636 viewers), and it became a truly massive hit in China, where it held the number-one spot for three weeks, repelling attacks from expected domestic hits, and was on the way to exceeding the revenues of Iron Man 3. Whereas domestic box-office receipts account for half of total global revenues with other Hollywood seasonal blockbusters such as Iron Man 3 and Fast & Furious 6, foreign receipts comprise two-thirds of the total in the case of Pacific Rim.
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After watching this film, at first I said to myself that it was completely average. But then I went down another star as I thought of a lot of scenes where the logic of it was just too incomprehensible. Pacific Rim is a textbook example of a blockbuster. I don’t blame it for that, I even liked the camera and digital effects that Guillermo del Toro and his crew worked with. But let no one tell me, and now I’m going to spoil a bit, that the best warriors in those robots are brothers who, by coincidence, are on a routine mission in a sea grasped by a monster who immediately takes down one of them. I was also fascinated by how ten years later the other brother is offered to control a robot again and is considered an incredible fighter, which of course the other colleagues do not believe him at all. Plus, not a single actor fully convinced me to like him here, which is quite a fundamental issue, because Guillermo relies on the power of dialogues that do not work here at all in this regard. The only one worth it is Charlie Day as the crazy doctor. The rest is neither funny nor interesting, and the viewer simply cannot connect to them, which is probably the most fundamental stumbling block. It’s not entirely bad, but it failed because of the average actors and a very bland screenplay, which is simplifying so many things that it’s just incredibly obvious.
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