Pacific Rim - Movie Review

"As a war between humankind and monstrous sea creatures wages on, a former pilot and a trainee are paired up to drive a seemingly obsolete weapon in a desperate effort to save the world from the apocalypse."

As you can imagine, myself and plenty of others have been waiting for this one for quite some time now, so tonight was an exciting night to finally be able to sit down and get to watch Pacific Rim. The film comes from Mexican born visionary director Guillermo Del Toro who has brought such movies as Hellboy I & II, Pan's Labyrinth and many others. I'm a fan of the man's work so put that and the concept of giant robots vs giant monsters and I was sold from the start. How was Pacific Rim? Did it have great action? Did it meet my expectations? Find out.

In terms of the story and the writing, what you see is what you get. If you were expecting a layered, emotional roller coaster that would deeply invest you in all of the characters and help attach depth and emotion into each and every action they take, you've come into the wrong film. I do believe however, that there is more than enough featured in both the opening 10 minutes of the film as well as throughout its duration to invest the audience into what's going on and gives us some insight into these people's lives. It suffices for just about as much as you would expect from a summer blockbuster, which it is. I've seen a couple of reviews for the film which have sort of bashed it in this respect and I don't necessarily deem it fair. Like I said, if you were expecting much more in this department then you really didn't grasp what the filmmakers were going for. As for the writing, I'd say it is similar to what you would expect from Del Toro's American films. Not to say this is bad because it works for the style, tone and setting that is creating/implementing but it's nothing new. Plenty of cheesy one liners and campy dialogue from characters so if that is right down your street then you'll have a field day with Pacific Rim!

Now I'm going to jump straight into what you all want to here, how was the action. Would calling it f*cking awesome do it justice? I'm not sure it would. This film did an excellent job of really immersing you into the set pieces and action taking place which hands down credit goes down to Mr Del Toro who did a grand job. You really got the sense that these attacks were on a global scale and felt the full verocity of each one. If you are going to watch the film, do it right and watch it in IMAX 3D, it will enhance each and every moment of this joy ride. For me, that is the only true way to watch it, either that or normal 3D due to it being how Guillermo wanted audiences to see the film. He isn't one of these directors who will just shoehorn the experience in for extra money or as a gimmick, he truly wants the audience to feel something and for the whole experience to be enhanced as a result. It sure does it's job in the action scenes as it comes into full play. Whether it be in the control rooms of these Jaegers or outside watching them smash monsters to death, it's a sight to behold put it that way. There was some innovative sequences and fight scenes that this film had to offer which makes it a thoroughly enjoyable experience as was expected from all of the trailers we have been given. It does well and truly live up to the expectations that I had set beforehand, and definitely in this department does it deliver.

Something that must be mentioned and praised for this film is both the use of practical and CGI effects. It's a trademark of Del Toro and he more than sticks to his guns in this huge, Hollywood epic. It's something I definitely admire about him, that despite taking advantage of all of the new, innovative technology available he still wants to take the time to make the possible things look great and has them made practically. Take the control rooms of the machines that are being piloted, this could have easily been green screened and edited in. Instead the director took the time out to build a real set, have the actors come to grips with what they were working in, and had many functioning parts. This spells someone who is passionate and committed to the line of work he's in and it sure as hell depicts that on screen. He obviously couldn't have built these giant robots and monsters so special effects were indeed needed but he more than held his own by using a great blend of the two. All of the monsters looked great, I liked that they weren't really anything we'd seen before. I'd say the closest monster in a film that was similar to the ones from Pacific Rim was probably Cloverfield, and even then it's quite far off. As well I appreciated that they were somewhat similar to one another while having characteristics and features that helped strand away from the previous monster we'd seen. It seems like they had a great time coming up with these monsters and a lot of effort and thought was gone into them. This mirrors my thoughts about the Jaegers that were being used to fight the monsters. I thought they were really well done and I'm extremely glad that the idea to have humans piloting them was used. I know we knew this prior to watching the film but it would have made for such a bland, uninteresting movie in my opinion had it not been done in this way.

This leads me onto my next point which I will talk about the characters in the film, as well as mentioning the acting by the people playing them and tie this in with the universe Del Toro and Beacham created. I was truly invested with the characters for the most part within the film, which I was quite surprised about. This doesn't always have to be the case to enjoy a film, being that it is a summer blockbuster. But I did, I thought they had a decent amount of depth and likability to them which brought a whole lot more to the film than I could have imagined. I thought all of the acting was fine for what the film was worth, it definitely wasn't bad. I think they stuck to the style and tone that was expected and asked of them which Del Toro chooses to implement in all his films. It's fine, I don't think it was bad but what I will say for this particular aspect of the film was that there was some very poor accents being thrown around. Ones that I will point out that sort of distracted me throughout, maybe this is just more of a personal thing for these two actors but Idris Elba and Charlie Hunnam. I couldn't get past the American accents they were trying to put on, I don't believe it's just the fact that I know they're two British actors, I genuinely believe they just can't portray convincing American accents.

The world that was created by the writers was excellent and completely convincing at least for me. There was many things that had to be believed for the film to work to a certain degree, they weren't going to change your outcome of the film completely but for the build up and details of the plot they were necessary. These included the technology being used, the year the film was set etc it all had to be nailed in order to convince the audience and I thought they did a great job with it. When I first saw that the film was set in 2020 and I was supposed to believe that giant robots were to be built by that year I thought it was going to spoil some of the fun of the film. Luckily it didn't and I genuinely felt that the world Gulliermo Del Toro had created was a truly real one that could well be what it turns out to be 7 years down the line.

Overall, I don't have anything negative to say about Pacific Rim because it was exactly everything I was expecting it to be. You could even say it exceeded my expectations because it had a little more development and tiny details that I didn't expect including characters I really liked to watch. The action and spectacle of the film was something I would recommend for everyone to see and the true way to watch such a glorified, immaculate piece of cinema is on the big screen where it belongs.