Pacific Rim Review

Director: Guillermo del Toro.

Starring: Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Burn Gorman, Ron Perlman, Diego Klattenhoff.

Running Time: 131 minutes.

Certificate: 12A.

Synopsis: When an alien attack threatens the Earth’s existence, giant robots piloted by humans are deployed to fight off the menace.

You know it’s summer when Hollywood writes cheques for $180 million to see what happens when gigantic amphibious aliens and human piloted mega-robots butt heads. But despite the all out action, blockbusting, CG-fest of a trailer, PACIFIC RIM surely promised to have a little more depth than your average summer event movie with Guillermo del Toro at the helm. If so, it lied.

The opening five minutes of the film brings us up to speed; since 2017 giant alien beasts called Kaiju have been emerging from a hole in the depths of the Pacific Ocean, attacking our cities and killing tens of thousands of people at a time. Humanity’s response was to ignore all the obvious means of defence and pile all its cash and resources into building giant robots called Jaegers operated from the inside by two people – they tried it with one, but it gave them nosebleeds. The program, led by Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) will have its government funding cut in favour of building a massive wall to keep the alien menace at bay.

So far, so ridiculous, but it sounds fun so who cares, right? Well, unfortunately you will after another two hours of diabolically expositional scripting and horribly contrived storytelling. To operate the robots, two people have to be, like, so on the same wavelength. While they control the machine, their brains fuse together and they are subjected to each other’s past memories, which really comes in handy when needing to take a shortcut on character interaction and development in favour of more mega battles. Sadly, this corner cutting makes it hard to immerse oneself in the story and really root for the film’s hero.

The characters feel two dimensional and bland with Charlie Hunnam as Raleigh struggling to carry the leading role alongside love interest Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) – “He’s a has been, she’s a rogue.” Yawn. This leaves an on form Idris Elba with the burden of carrying the film. He plays Raleigh’s commanding officer with effortless authority and somehow manages to deliver even the stalest of dialogue with sincerity. Mad scientists Newton (Charlie Day) and Herman (Burn Gorman) provide the sideshow to the main strand of the film, and although their characters are ludicrously cartoonish and out of whack with the rest of the film’s tone, they at least provide some welcome comedic respite.

PACIFIC RIM is obviously at its best when the extensive battle sequences play out over land and sea, with the money up on the screen for all to witness. It does look impressive and del Toro doesn’t skimp on the action, but something just doesn’t quite sit right. As an enormous Jaeger lands another thunder-bastard of an upper cut to a Kaiju’s chin, you should be punching the air with delight, but it’s hard to really feel anything when the story behind it all is so wishy-washy and contrived. Why are they shooting rockets from a robot’s chest? Wouldn’t that work from the ground? Why do they only pull out what is undoubtedly the Jaeger’s best weapon when it’s almost too late? Obviously plot-holes are rife in this genre, but usually there’s at least an attempt to explain them away.

PACIFIC RIM may appeal if you absolutely must have a mouthful of summer popcorn silliness, but don’t expect to be emotionally drawn in on any level, as it’s surprisingly mishandled by a filmmaker who has previously proven through PAN’S LABYRINTH and THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE that he has form in this area. The tagline boldly reads, “Go big or go extinct.” In an era of sequels, rehashes, tie-ins, and spin-offs, it went big, now hopefully it will go extinct.

PACIFIC RIM is released in UK and US cinemas on July 12th.