REVIEW: Pacific Rim

Courtesy of Warner Bros.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a young boy standing awestruck in front of a poster for Pacific Rim, Guillermo del Toro’s new film in which humanity uses skyscraper-sized robots to fight gigantic alien monsters. I could understand why the kid’s jaw was on the floor – the poster effectively communicated the movie’s scope by showcasing a battle-damaged robot emerging from the ocean as two ant-sized spectators cower on the beach. It was a breathtaking image, one that made me excited for the flick in a way I hadn’t been initially.

On Tuesday night, as I gaped in bug-eyed disbelief at Pacific Rim in IMAX 3D, I repeatedly wished I could see the look on that boy’s face when he finally experiences the film. He’s going to lose his mind. It’s what happened to millions of young moviegoers in 1977 when a spaceship flew over their heads in Star Wars. It’s what happened to me in 1993 when I saw that brachiosaurus in Jurassic Park.

This weekend, when countless kids see an enormous robot use an oil tanker like a baseball bat to defeat a terrifying lizard monster, it’s going to happen to them. Pacific Rim probably won’t be a box office smash like those other films, but it’s going to be a formative experience that creates a brand new generation of movie nerds.

The opening 15 minutes do a terrific job of setting up the context of these battles. In the near future, scores of alien beasts – known as kaiju – emerge from the sea and wreak havoc that kills millions of people and renders major cities uninhabitable. To fight back, humanity pooled their knowledge and resources to create robots – or jaegers, in the flick’s parlance – so immense that they must be controlled by two pilots whose minds are locked together in a neural bridge. It’s a genius concept, but a dangerous one: because the pilots’ minds are linked, they experience shared memories, emotions and pain.

Amazing as the jaegers are, they only prove to be a stopgap against the kaiju. Things are looking bleak for humanity, but resistance leader Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) has an insane, go-for-broke battle plan. To pull it off, he’ll need the help of two talented but unpredictable individuals.

One is Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam), a former jaeger pilot with deeply personal reasons for staying out of the cockpit. The other is Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), a brilliant trainee with a connection to Pentecost that makes him want to keep her on the sidelines as much as possible. With their help, and a lot of luck, humanity might just be able to stop the end of the world.

Pacific Rim is the perfect combination of old-school moviemaking and modern special effects. Del Toro (who also helmed the Hellboy films and the beautifully tragic Pan’s Labyrinth) has an innate talent for creating stunning, otherworldly creatures and heart-pounding action sequences, but he also understands something that eludes many current filmmakers: none of that matters if you’re not using it to tell a great story.

That’s where the screenplay, written by Travis Beacham and del Toro, comes in. Adrenaline junkies will love it because there’s never really a chance to catch your breath; it’s wall-to-wall action for 131 minutes. However, the fights and explosions aren’t in the film just to look cool. (They’re plenty cool, don’t get me wrong.) The human element of the story is front and center in every exhilarating set piece. Beacham and del Toro never let the audience forget these characters are fighting for the lives of everyone on the planet.

Of course, it’s tough to lose sight of the human element when del Toro puts together such a phenomenal cast. Elba is terrific as the leader of this crazy bunch of freedom fighters, and he gets to demonstrate a surprising emotional range in his scenes with other actors. His relationship with Raleigh is far different than the one he has with Mako, and that comes across when he’s interacting with them.

Kikuchi is the other standout. She’s intense, funny, stunningly beautiful, and able to convey exactly what her character is thinking even when she’s not talking. She communicates more effectively with her eyes than some actresses can with an entire script’s worth of dialogue. The sci-fi and action genres don’t exactly have a great track record with their treatment of women, but Mako should stand alongside Princess Leia and Trinity in the pantheon of strong female characters.

The supporting cast gets plenty of opportunities to shine, but none more than Charlie Day as Newt Geiszler, a kaiju-obsessed scientist, and Ron Perlman (a del Toro regular) as Hannibal Chau, a gangster who specializes in selling monster parts on the black market. Their chemistry is so strong that I could’ve watched an entire movie about those two interacting in Chau’s shop.

If Pacific Rim has a weak link, it’s Hunnam. The actor comes across as bland and unengaged, a problem when his character is supposed to be striving to overcome a personal tragedy and fighting passionately for Mako to be his new co-pilot. Sons of Anarchy fans know the English actor has always had a problem mastering an American accent, and his performance here reveals it hasn’t gotten much better. His work isn’t enough to take viewers out of the film, it’s just disappointing.

Parents looking to score some serious brownie points with their children should take them to see Pacific Rim this weekend, preferably in IMAX. Yes, it’ll be expensive. But I cannot adequately put into words what this movie will do to them. Don’t take the PG-13 rating too seriously; all the violence is of the alien/robot variety and (if I’m remembering correctly) there are only a couple of instances of foul language. This thing is custom-built for kids (as long as they don’t scare easily) and they need to see it on the biggest screen possible.

Pacific Rim is rated PG-13 for sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence throughout, and brief language.

Grade: A-