Review: Pacific Rim

By. Joe Moss
★★★

  Alien invaders [Kaiju; Japanese for “strange creatures”] coming from the “breach”—a portal from another dimension that manifested in the middle of the Pacific plate.

This is the premise for Guillermo del Toro’s (Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy) summer, big-budget action thrill-ride “Pacific Rim.” While the story-line is spectacularly original (given Hollywood’s recent panache for remakes and sequels/pre-quels) , it does evoke thoughts of classic Godzilla meets “Aliens” meets “Transformers.” But this movie works thanks to the dynamic writing duo of Travis Beacham (Dog Days of Summer, Clash of the Titans) and Guillermo del Toro! The cast, while not littered with an ensemble of big-name stars (with the exception of a few appearance by Ron Perlman), really work well together to fulfill del Toro’s vision.

  To fight the Kaiju, large, robotic, war-machines (Jaegars) are developed through world-wide collaboration. Two pilots are mind-melded together and “synced” with the machine to run it as a human-like combatant—only 500 feet taller. The plot focuses on Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam; “Sons of Anarchy,” Green Street Hooligans) and his ability to overcome the debilitating loss of his brother from a battle-gone-wrong with a Kaiju off the Alaskan coastline. He disappears from the lime-light (and the front line of battle) only to be pulled back into reality as the Jaegar program is threatened by budget cuts and mounting defeats by the ever-evolving Kaiju invaders.

  Raleigh is brought back into the fold of the remaining Jaegar pilots—only 7 remain—and is reunited with he and his brother’s former machine, the Gipsy Danger. The last remaining analog-programmed, nuclear powered Jaeger. The search begins for his new copilot. Not an easy process as they have to be able to be compatible in fighting ability and mind-flow processing. Raleigh easily bests all of the top candidates, but is drawn to a military analyst, Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), his commanding officer’s (Idris Elba) ward. Is it an attraction of lust, or of perfect compatibility? I… will leave that for you to discover…

  The plot continues much as expected in all alien-based thrillers. The humans are trying to vanquish the alien invaders only to be thwarted at each turn by an ever growing (and seemingly endless) array of Kaiju. They just keep getting bigger and more powerful.

  Enter the science research department headed by biologist Dr. Newton Geiszler (Charlie Day) and chaos mathematician Gottlieb (Burn Gorman). Gottlieb theorizes that the invasion is on the verge of exponential increase as the attacks keep getting closer and more precise; while Dr. Geiszler is attempting to understand the thought process behind the creatures invasion. Through his research, he “mind-melds” with a partial, living frontal lobe of one specimen and determines they are all mentally congruent—also sneaking a peak at their ultimate intentions and history in the process. Finally the military is able to develop a plan to destroy the “breach” and remove the invaders once and for all. IF everything can go according to plan.

  An amazing ride from the opening sequence to the final clip after the credits. I was drawn into the story through all of its twists and turns. Well acted and amazingly edited by the team of Peter Amundson (Star Wars episode 5, Hellboy) and John Gilroy (Warrior, Micheal Clayton), there was not a lot of downtime to allow your mind to wander. The sound effects were mind blowing and the visual effects are another great example of the efforts at ILM and Ghost VFX for combining green screen and animatronics into a seamless vision.