Review: Pacific Rim!
19th July 2013
It seems that there are genuinely few summer blockbusters that are generally greats. In the past few years it seems that greatness has been even thinner on the ground than usual, we have been treated to numerous (and pointless) Hollywood reboots or part 4 of a franchise that ceased to be ground-breaking halfway through part 1.
With Pacific Rim though we are treated to that rarest of beasts, or Kaiju if you will, a new film with no 80’s cartoon to back it up and a big budget action thrill ride all in one.
The plot is simple enough giant robots fight giant monsters and unlike other films of the like such as Cloverfield or Transformers, Pacific Rim knows exactly what its fans want and we are thrown into our first fight within the first five minutes and it is a corker and the pace rarely lets up from then.
Now I know the idea of giant robots fighting monsters may not be the most original in the world, in fact I’m pretty sure that 70 percent of all anime is made up of this but this film stands head and shoulders above the rest and that is largely due to director Guillermo Del Toro (Hellboy, Pans Labyrinth) firstly he eschews the close up shaky cam approach to giant monster fights his contemporaries favour and instead we get glorious long shots of these fights, you can tell that everyone involved in this project was proud of it and wanted the audience to revel in its stunning visuals as well.
Of course Del Toro is not just content making an amazing action movie his characters are well rounded and we actually care about their fates from Charlie Hunnams’ loose cannon pilot to Idris Elbas’ gruff general we actually want them to succeed.
There are occasional misses in the film though the scientist comic relief is a bit hit and miss, and Charlie Hunnams and Robert Kazinskys slightly Top Gun-ish conflict feels a little flat, finally Ron Perlmans subplot is a bit superfluous but still quite fun and luckily we don’t have to linger on any these negatives for too long before we’re whisked off to yet more robot ass-kickery.
In closing this is a exciting, thrilling, roller coaster ride of a movie with some genuine touching moments and some beautifully realised genre characters. Don’t go and see this movie if you’re a fan of sci-fi or action movies, just go and see this movie full stop and feel all the better because of it. Possibly the best movie of the year.