Review of Pacific Rim (2013) by Matthew L — 20 Dec 2014

Pacific Rim, which is basically a giant nod to movies about giant monsters and/or giant robots, could have turned out really bad. Considering the subject matter, it's executed very well. The movie totally delivers on the technical side. It's a spectacular looking movie with rich, detailed, stylized visuals and a booming, epic, brass-heavy soundtrack that really does justice to the magnitude of the large-scale battles. However, it's very easy for a movie like this to be a soulless trek between action sequences. I feel that it was fairly successful at avoiding this.

During the downtime it's established that the world had united to combine their technology in order to make a last stand against the kaijus. There's some backstory on the leads, Raleigh and Mako, about past events that haunt them.

They help each other overcome these problems and team up to wage one final battle against the increasingly powerful kaijus.

I applaud that they chose a female, non-white actress to play one of the leading roles - not typical for the action genre. Several side characters provide comic relief, including a cameo by Ron Perlman, which is always a welcome addition. Idris Elba is solid too, delivering his lines with authority and confidence (when he talks, you listen), and he has possibly the funniest line in the whole movie.

As for nitpicks - two of the four Jaegers don't last too long and their pilots have essentially no dialog, but I can sort of look past it since there wouldn't really be enough time to develop that many characters and still cram in all the action that you are expecting. The underwater scenes are a bit dark and not as easy to follow, and aren't quite as cool as the rest. The subplot involving the father and son Australian pilots perhaps could have been elaborated on a bit more. There's a deleted scene that addresses this. The final sequence gives us a very brief peek into where the kaijus come from, but it's not much more than a tease.

The bottom line, though, is that Pacific Rim gives you exactly what it promises with gusto. And there's just enough soul dispersed between the action that it ends up being a memorable and enjoyable ride.