Movie Review: Pacific Rim

Pacific Rim/Rated PG-13/Warner Bros./132 min./Dir. Guillermo Del Toro

Guillermo Del Toro has carved a unique place out for himself in the annuls of genre film.  With films like "Pan's Labyrinth" and the "Hellboy" films, he has shown a flare for highly poetic fantasies/fairy tales that veer jarringly, yet organically from light to dark and back again.  His films have a reputation for being praised by critics, worshiped by movie geeks, and utterly ignored by the general movie going public.  His newest film, "Pacific Rim", is for better or worse the least "Del Toro" feeling film on his filmography.  That doesn't mean that it's a bad film by any means.  While it lacks the visual poetry and the quirky atmosphere of his other films, it takes one of the most juvenile of sci-fi sub-genres, the giant robot destructopalooza, and injects it with a heaping helping of humanity.  No, the biggest surprise about "Pacific Rim" isn't its groundbreaking special effects, but that it's actually about people as opposed to hardware.

In a well paced prologue, we're told about a group of skyscraper-sized aliens called the Kaiju that have been waging a war against Earth after having coming through an inter-dimensional rift in the Pacific.  When it became clear that the monsters were not going to stop, the countries of the Earth put aside their differences, pooled their resources, and created the Jaeger program, which involves giant robots that are connected to the cerebral functions of their pilots.  At first, it seemed that the humans would fairly easily win this war, but the Kaiju kept coming, kept getting bigger, and started coming more often, which depleted the world's supply of Jaegers.  Now, as the Jaeger program faces discontinuation and the human race faces extinction, the final group of brave pilots come up with a final plan to stop the end of the world.

Contrary to what one would believe from the commercials, "Pacific Rim" is not a two hour Godzilla-type battle scene.  There are a few stunning action set pieces, but Del Toro spends the bulk of the time building back stories and character-based motivations that get us to root for the pilots, not the robots.  It also helps that he has assembled strong actors even in the lesser roles.  Granted, they're not required to do any Oscar-level emoting, but they all approach the film with commitment and sincerity, which is a huge ace up the movie's sleeve.  A sci-fi film with uncommitted or untalented actors will fail to engage the audience on an emotional level, regardless of how lavish the special effects.  For an example of this, just look at the "Transformers" movies.  In those films, the abilities of the actors were uneven, with some fully believable and others simply laughable, and not in a good way.  Here, however, the cast is all on equal footing, making it easy to buy into their characters and into the more implausible aspects of the plot.

Del Toro has never directed an event film of this magnitude before, but it's clear that he's been inspired by some of the best.  The film has the grit and militaristic flair of the best of James Cameron's sci-fi efforts without the occasional horrible writing (I love "Avatar", but I can't hear the word "unobtainium" without bursting into fits of giggling).    Also, while the plot sounds like Godzilla vs. Transformers, it actually feels like a much more thoughtful version of "Independence Day", displaying a similar humor (particularly in the form of Charlie Day, who between this and his role as the scene stealing Art from "Monsters University" has made the leap to big-budget movies with great success), and hitting similar emotional beats to the 1996 blockbuster.

Visually, the film is spectacular.  In fact, it's one of the rare live-action films where I think the 3D is worth the extra-money.  Del Toro shows an understanding of how to connect the technology with the story telling in such away that the 3D technology actually feels fundamental to his overall directorial vision.  "Hugo" and "Life of Pi" also did a wonderful job with the 3D format, but an action movie hasn't used the technique with this level of success since Cameron's "Avatar", which is especially impressive when you consider how many scenes take place in the bark and in the rain, both of which are notorious for minimizing the 3D effect.

On the negative side, "Pacific Rim" is, in what is becoming the standard for big-budget tentpole films, about 20 minutes too long and it occasionally goes for the obvious joke or plot development (it won't take you long to figure out which characters will be around in the final frames), but when compared to other films with similar plots, it's thoughtfully created into something resembling art.  How many times can you say that about a giant summer special-effects extravaganza?

The last word is that "Pacific Rim" is thoughtful, fun, and exciting.  It is also a little overlong and a little predictable for its own good.  Overall, though, it's an easy recommendation and I hope that it will be financially successful if only to encourage Hollywood to give their giant sci-fi films a head and a heart as well as a love of explosive special-effects.

Grade: B+