NOW THIS IS HOW YOU DO IT!
Not since Hellboy 2: The
Golden Army has Guillermo Del Toro stepped onto the scene as a director. In the
years since his last directorial feature, credits for Del Toro have been
reserved as a producer for various horror films and Dreamworks projects, as
well as screenwriting credits like The Hobbit. Needless to say, everyone was
excited for the Pan’s Labyrinth and Devil’s Backbone director to sit back into
the director’s chair, and with Pacific Rim, his unabashedly giddy love letter
to anime and Kaiju media, we finally got our wish. As light and breezy as it is
huge and exhilarating, Pacific Rim is enough to make you feel like a kid at
Christmas.
The first fifteen minutes
establishes the world and rules of the film very well. Deep beneath the Pacific
Ocean, a portal has opened that releases Kaijus, giant inter-dimensional beasts
that have attacked earth’s major cities. In light of these events, the world’s governments
rallied together to create Jaegers, giant mecha fighters built to defeat the
beasts, and require two synchronized pilots to control the machines. Over time,
humanity has learned to survive the apocalyptic settings, but the Kaijus have
only gotten larger over time, and Jaegers are destroyed faster than they’re
built. With the Kaiju situation only getting worse, Commander Pentecost (Idris
Elba), with the help of a former Jaeger pilot (Charlie Hunnam), and a young
woman (Rinko Kikuchi) who eventually serves as his co-pilot, hatches a plan to
neutralize the threat once and for all.
A very lighthearted and anti-cynical
romp throughout, Pacific Rim takes a while to get into, but once it has its
hold, it never lets go. Much of the film’s well delivered exposition is gotten
out of the way quickly, and it never overbears the viewer with too many
details. Once this universe is established, we eventually get to the task of developing
character, and much like Del Toro’s anime influences, these characters are a
nice throwback to classic archetypes. Everything is here, from the secretive
and tough captains, to the bumbling comic relief characters, here as scientists
Newt and Gottlieb (Charlie Day and Burn Gorman), the former of which has very
humorous scenes with a gruff black market dealer (Ron Perlman) who specializes
in selling Kaiju body parts. There may be a certain stigma from some viewers of
this movie, who may write them off as little more than cliché. However, I
really don’t understand how being cliché is automatically considered a BAD
thing. You can use clichés and archetypes and still have them work. It just
depends on how the filmmaker executes them, and Del Toro handles these elements
with plenty of charm and finesse to spare.
Of course, the real reason
that Pacific Rim is worth watching is because of the simple fact that… IT’S. A.
BLAST! This movie is so in tune with my inner child, it even has GLaDOS as the
Jaeger’s AI. It’s enough to make you feel like a ten year old, but it doesn’t
resort to insulting the audience. The movie is huge, it’s funny, and even
though you have to do some waiting for the big action sequences, the cast and
the storytelling are so rock solid that you don’t mind the waits. The film’s
first action sequence takes place in the first fifteen minutes, and the next
big Jaeger/Kaiju battle takes about an hour before starting, but this movie
makes the payoff TOTALLY worth it. Stepping into Del Toro’s enthusiastic
imagination, it’s like watching the action figures in your toy chest fully
realized as giant monsters, and seeing them duke it out in the streets of huge
cities. Del Toro understands that complete investment is required to fully
enjoy these scenes, and this is a huge part of why the action in Pacific Rim
works so well. Not only are they smartly paced, they’re simply pleasing to the
eye and ear. As an exercise in technical design, this movie gets points for
both quantity, and quality. Everything from the staggering effects work supervised
by John Knoll, the stunning photography of Guillermo Navarro, and the slick
editing by John Gilroy and Peter Amundsen, to Scott Martin Gershin and Tim Walston’s
sound design and Ramin Djawadi’s rockin’ orchestral score is all crafted to
perfection.
This is the definition of a
great summer blockbuster. In an age where audiences are often bombarded with
sequels and reboots, it’s nice to see a summer flick with some originality to
it. Let’s just hope the wait for Del Toro’s next project won’t be too long.
****1/2 / *****
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