The premise for "Pacific Rim" is as simple as can be.
Giant mechs called "Jaeger's" fight behemoth monsters called "Kaiju" and they punch each other to smithereens. That's it. But somehow this fantastical formula turned out well thanks to some great execution by "Hellboy" and "Pan's Labyrinth" director Guillermo Del Toro.
In the future, giant crocodilian, Lovecraftian monsters crawl out from a fissure in the Earth that is a portal to another world. Once these Kaiju arrive, they begin sacking cities from Seattle to Sydney and the humans decide to fight back with giant mechas piloted by two people on a rusty elliptical.
Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam, "Sons of Anarchy") is one of the these Jaeger pilots, the best apparently, who after the loss of his brother Yancy Becket (Diego Klattenhoff, "After Earth"), is called back into service once again by Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba, "Luther").
These Jaeger pilots have to "drift" with each other, a process that entails some sort of new-age philosophy, but is really when two people are allowed unfettered access to each others memories. The deeper the connection, the better they fight.
Del Toro's monster flick owes a certain debt to many kinds of pulp B-movies and TV anime shows from "Neon Genesis Evangelion" to "Big O." It tosses in giant homages the 1989 Stuart Gordon oil slick pulp flick "Robot Jox." The effects of Ray Harryhausen's creatures and the old Kaiju films from Godzilla to Gamera. Anything goes in "Pacific Rim."
There's also just a tiny bit of elements from "Independence Day." This is the terrain of "Pacific Rim" and it's packed with such monumental design and color that it does inspire a certain sense of awe. From the sprawling cities to the shots of Kaiju rising up from the sea teeming with luminescent detail and the scuffs on the battle tested mechas, Del Toro displays a knack for giving "Pacific Rim" a sense of affection and will to impress.
Del Toro paces "Pacific Rim" with a video game economy -- classing each different Kaiju into ascending levels of difficulty -- and treats the human characters with equal suspect.
The Jaeger's all have their own baroque names and cartoon-like character traits. Unfortunately, the acting is occasionally stilted and short circuits throughout, but this is a movie where the humans are not particularly the grand appeal.
It's the fights, and the fights are massive. There's a kind of Billy Mays salesman showmanship. Every clash between the Kaijus and mechas feels like it's announcing "but wait...there's more!" When those moments do come they are straight out of the playbook of making stuff look cool. And it does.
Rinko Kikuchi ("Babel") plays Mako Mori and receives the most dynamic material of "Pacific Rim." Her story becomes a quest for revenge and this element imbues a hair trigger notion that she could not be able to handle piloting the Jaeger at all. That story detail imbues a natural tension in the film, but Del Toro's handling of the human side of "Pacific Rim," while competent, is still slightly lacking.
All the heroes are types. While this makes them far easier to relate with, the decision is deliberate because the pace of the film is so lean. There's not enough time to spend with these characters in order to get a sense of who they are. They are fully formed before the audience has arrived. If only one could strap into a mecha and "drift" with them it might have made the whole experience more sophisticated.
But Del Toro manages to put enough of a human heart, and plenty of technical prowess, in this big clunky rustbucket blockbuster that it becomes 2500 tons of an awesome love letter to giant monster movies.
dkahen-kashi@theeagleonline.com
