Review: Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter

by Trevor Kirkendall

★★½

One of my all time favorite movies is the Coen Brother’s 1996 masterpiece “Fargo.” Naturally, a movie coming out today that uses specific elements of “Fargo” as its own MacGuffin definitely piques my interest. And to do so in an inventive way helps further the idea that a wealth of original creative thought still exists if we, as moviegoers, take the time out to actually look for it. Unfortunately in this case, “Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter” stalls a little bit in the creativity department, but still ends up being a mostly enjoyable experience.

Rinko Kikuchi (“Babel,” “Pacific Rim”) stars as the title character Kumiko, a woman in her late twenties living in Tokyo where she works in a monotonous dead end job. That’s easily identifiable with about 80% of us, right? You don’t need to be fluent in Japanese to understand that, I’m sure. Kumiko is also enormously obsessed with finding buried treasure in the United States. She believes that the money buried in the snow by Steve Buscemi near the end of “Fargo” really happened and is just waiting for her to come find it. After all, “Fargo” does open with a disclaimer saying the film is a true story (even though it isn’t).

Kumiko refuses to believe that the story is fabricated and really wants to find this money. It’s an obsession that has ruined her social life and her work ethic. She says she’s like a Spanish Conquistador and will stop at nothing to find the treasure. As she travels to Minneapolis, no one wants to help her get to Fargo, where she believes her riches await. The depressing irony in watching this movie is that we all know the money hidden in the snow is as real as the bloody stump of a foot sticking out of the wood chipper in that infamous scene. Only Kumiko believes its there.

It’s actually a very depressing premise when you think about it. This same story probably could have been told under lighter tones and would have been just as effective and maybe a little more enjoyable. Instead, the script is written to be about as dark as humanly possible. It’s still fun to watch, but it’s a hard film to love.

Written by the Zellner Brothers – David and Nathan, and directed by David – “Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter” could be seen as a cautionary tale about what happens when our obsessions get the better of us. Kumiko’s work performance suffers, her social life is non-existent, and her mother barely speaks to her, all because she spends her evenings analyzing the scene where Buscemi buries the money.

It’s an interesting idea to address, and one we could all probably reflect on in our own lives. The biggest issue with the film is that Kuminko slowly becomes much more sympathetic than she is empathetic. She’s easily identifiable as the film opens, but as the film continues, she becomes more and more determined to the point where it’s almost insane. This makes you feel just plain bad for her. If a scene here or there had been cut down, the story may have ended before all empathy had been depleted.

The Zellner’s are also a bit heavy handed when it comes to their metaphoric imagery, especially in the film’s finale. There’s nothing wrong with a good metaphor here or there, but it should continually berate you to make sure you understood what they were trying to convey.

Kikuchi is spectacular in this role. She may have even topped her Academy Award nominated performance in the 2006 film “Babel.” She’s the only one on screen throughout the entire film and is able to command your attention in every scene. She holds herself in a timid and reserved posture, speaks softly and broken most of the time but stares her co-stars down with a focused intensity that says she doesn't care what they think about her dream. It is ,most definitely a thrilling performance to behold.

“Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter” is well done and well executed. I even appreciated all the small subtle nods toward the Coen Brothers cult classic as well. It’s just a hard movie to fully embrace as a stand alone film. It’s an interesting premise developed into a very interesting theme, yet somehow the translation into film is very much dark and brooding even while the landscape surrounding our hero is blindingly bright with the snowy Minnesota landscapes.

Review: Pacific Rim

by Trevor Kirkendall
★★★½

There will not be a more adrenaline pumping motion picture to come out this summer than “Pacific Rim”. Its been a very long time since a movie has come out in the theaters during the summer months that’s been as much fun as this film. Despite minor flaws - that might actually be by design from the filmmakers – “Pacific Rim” is summer movie magic at its absolute best.

Not too far into the future, humanity is waging war with giant monsters that come from the sea known as the Kaiju. The Kaiju rise up from a portal from another world found deep in the sea and lay waste to the major cities on Pacific Ocean coastlines (San Francisco, Hong Kong, Sydney, etc.). To defeat these beasts, man has built giant robotic war machines called Jaegers. The Jaegers are piloted by two people joined together through a neurological bond; they think and act as one by sharing each other’s memories and experiences.

Our hero is Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) who is a Jaeger pilot along with his brother Yancy (Diego Klattenhoff). When battling a particularly vicious Kaiju, Yancy is tragically killed leaving Raleigh to pilot the Jaeger himself, but this will be his final mission. He’s too broken up about the loss of his brother to continue with the program.

Five years pass and Becket is no longer a Jaeger pilot. He’s working on a coastal wall that’s supposed to keep the Kaiju away. The Jaeger Program is being shut down. Its been reassigned to Hong Kong where it will keep up defenses until the wall is complete. Becket’s former commander, Marshall Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba), shows up and recruits Becket to come back for one final mission. They think they have a plan to stop the Kaiju once and for all and they’re running out of time to pull it off.

Once in Hong Kong, Becket meets Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) who is tasked with helping him find his new co-pilot. She too has a tragic history involving the Kaiju, much like Beckett losing his brother. He also meets two doctors, Dr. Newton Geiszler (Charlie Day) and Dr. Gottlieb (Burn Gorman), who are researching the Kajiu and provide the bulk of the film’s comic relief.

There is much to pick apart in “Pacific Rim”, but I don’t really want to because this movie is so much fun. I can’t remember the last time I went to the theater and had as much fun watching a film as I did “Pacific Rim”. Its truly a reminder of what the summer movie season used to be.

Think back long ago to the big studio tent pole movies that opened in the summer. They were fun, enjoyable, humorous and exciting. Very rarely do we see such films like that now. Now they’re just dark and lack even the slightest bit of humor. Movies that fit this bill could be the recent “Man of Steel” or the “Dark Knight” Trilogy. I’m not saying these films are bad, but they don’t bring out the kid in you when you watch them.

“Pacific Rim” does! It reminds me of the summer movies when you were carried away by the spectacle of the film and not on creating something so dark and mysterious. I’m reminded of films like “Jurassic Park” or maybe even “Independence Day”. While neither are masterpieces by any stretch, both movies do give you that sense of wonder and amazement. This is what makes “Pacific Rim” so great. Its an amazing film that demands you never take your eyes off the screen. It also demands you see it on the biggest screen you possibly can.

Director Guillermo del Toro wanted to make a film that felt like the summer movies of old, and that is what he’s accomplished. Having previously done one of the greatest films of the last decade, “Pan’s Labyrinth”, de Toro has proven himself to be a visionary master. The scale of “Pacific Rim” is enormous and he has been extremely successful in pulling this off. Every frame of this film is amazing to see.

“Pacific Rim” isn’t without its faults. The story itself is solid with several decent subplots that tie everything together nicely. The screenplay itself, however, is littered with typical action film clichés. From the first minute all the way to the final frame, you can practically see every plot point coming before it arrives. Its predictability puts a damper on some of the epic battle sequences and tense moments because we know what’s coming before it happens. Not to mention, there are also numerous moments of coincidence that help get the plot out of a jam. It’s just lazy writing and it insults the intelligence of the audience.

It also suffers from poor dialogue. Its borderline “Star Wars”-prequel bad. There are many moments where you just have to shake you head at the disbelief that another human could ever say something so cheesy. Additionally, the heartfelt dialogue meant to pull on your emotions is overacted and far too melodramatic. Its laughable at times. There’s plenty of comic relief built in, but I don’t think these were supposed to be the comical parts.

But couldn’t all that cheesy dialogue and all the plot coincidences be by design? Del Toro has made a movie that pays a lot of homage to the old monster movies of his childhood. The old “Godzilla” movies are very cheesy in their own right, but they’re very fun to watch. If that’s the case, then it really doesn’t matter what faults “Pacific Rim” has. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a summer film show us how much fun can be had at the movies. Poor acting and bad dialogue aside, “Pacific Rim” is the blockbuster event of the summer. An original story that’s full of the same thrills and excitement we haven’t seen in a summer film in many years.

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.