3.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for intense sci-fi violence and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.12.13
Guillermo del Toro must have
loved Godzilla movies as a kid.
His newest action fantasy, Pacific Rim, is a valentine to the dozen or so romp ’em, stomp ’em features
that starred “the big G” during del Toro’s formative years. (Quite a few more
have been made since then.) This tip of the hat clearly is deliberate, since
the director and fellow scripter Travis Beacham refer to their ginormous
critters as kaiju, the Japanese term — literally “strange beast,” but more
commonly “giant monster” — coined, back in the day, to describe Godzilla,
Mothra, Rodan and their ilk.
Throw in plenty of 21st century
whiz-bang special effects, and the result is a high-tech thrill ride that
blends big monsters, equally massive robot-like avatars, and the stubborn pluck
of a puny human race unwilling to go quietly into that good night.
During a summer laden with
end-of-the-world scenarios — zombie apocalypse and Kryptonian apocalypse, not
to mention the biblical Book of Revelations — this one takes the prize for
cheeky absurdity. At the same time, del Toro and Beacham pay careful attention
to the human element, giving us would-be saviors who are inspiring for their
fortitude, and endearing for their flaws.
Not to mention, it’s always nice
when a screenplay takes the optimistic view, and shows world powers uniting in
an effort to save the planet. Such all-for-one selflessness goes all the way
back to H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, and the reminder is refreshing in this
divisively cynical age.
Audacious fantasy has been del
Toro’s stock-in-trade ever since 1997’s under-appreciated and genuinely creepy Mimic. He also was the perfect choice to adapt graphic novelist Mike
Mignola’s lunatic Hellboy series, and — as an executive producer — del Toro
has chaperoned riveting projects such as 2007’s wonderfully atmospheric The Orphanage.
And let us not forget his
masterpiece: 2006’s Pan’s Labyrinth, the Oscar-winning horror film that
brought adult sensibilities to a genre too frequently willing to settle for
much less, and which demonstrated that human monsters can be much, much worse
than anything cooked up by our vivid imaginations.
Pacific Rim doesn’t wade
through such high-falutin' waters, though; this is simply del Toro’s first stab
at a crowd-pleasing, mega-budget summer blockbuster, and he has done a
commendable job.
The film, set in the
not-too-distant future, opens with an extended flashback: An unseen narrator
recalls the unexpected arrival of the first kaiju, an enormous — and quite
savage — amphibious creature bent on death and destruction. It rises from the
ocean depths and wreaks considerable havoc before being brought down by
conventional military hardware.
Apparently passing this off as an
isolated incident — perhaps a lone, Bradbury-esque behemoth, driven by
curiosity to the surface world — mankind is similarly unprepared months later,
when the next one arrives. And then another. And another, at noticeably shorter
intervals. Scientists realize that they’re coming from some sort of dimensional
portal deep in the Pacific Ocean.
Faced with the obvious need to Do
Something, the world’s nations pool their resources and develop the largest,
most versatile and aggressively lethal weapon ever devised. This is the Jaeger
Program, which constructs 25-story-tall mechanical “robots” that are operated
by two pilots whose minds are linked both to each other, and to the machine’s
limbs and assault gadgets.
Think Wii technology, taken to
the obvious extreme.
For a time, the ploy is
successful; thanks also to a computer-sensor “early warning system” that
registers portal activity, the kaiju become an irritating but dispatchable
menace. Jaeger pilots, like Apollo astronauts, turn into the world’s new
heroes.
Years pass ... and, then, the
unthinkable. The kaiju adapt; a Jaeger robot falls. The pendulum shifts, and
Earth’s first line of defense loses its edge.
(Yes, this is all back-story!)
The story proper opens as the
Jaeger Program is scrapped, much to the dismay of its guiding light, Pan
Pacific Defense Corp Commander Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba). World leaders
shift their strategy to the construction of tall, thick sea walls apparently
intended to prevent the kaiju from making landfall. (This seems an idiotic
notion on all sorts of levels, not the least of which is the havoc increased
numbers of the monsters would wreak on ocean life.)
Predictably, this new defense
proves less than successful. Worse yet, scientists have determined that the
kaiju are popping up at exponential rates, leading to the ghastly realization
that, soon, two of them will appear at the same time.
All hope now rests with the
remnants of Pentecost’s Jaeger program, and its four surviving robots: Gypsy
Danger, from the USA; China’s Crimson Typhoon; Russia’s Cherno Alpha; and
Australia’s Striker Eureka. Although everybody already knows that Jaeger tech
has proven unsuccessful, mankind isn’t about to go down without a fight. (Damn
straight!)
Del Toro never works with
big-name stars, preferring the greater verisimilitude of fresh faces blended
with seasoned character actors. Our all-American good guy, Raleigh Becket, is
played by Charlie Hunnam, best known these days for his ongoing role on TV’s Sons of Anarchy. Hunnam is properly clean-cut, and Becket is a flawed tragic
hero: an emotionally crippled, one-time Jaeger pilot who never recovered from
the years-ago battle that marked the beginning of the end.
Still, as Pentecost insists — in
the grand tradition of such underdog sagas — “You’re the best we’ve got.” Elba
probably is one of very few actors who could make that hoary line sound
credible; his Pentecost is the epitome of crisply starched, unswerving loyalty to
tactical precision. We’ve not seen a military commander rendered so
persuasively since George C. Scott’s George S. Patton.
The Australian Jaeger is manned
by the father-and-son team of Herc and Chuck Hansen (Max Martini and Robert
Kazinsky). Martini, a longtime acting veteran, exudes the sort of
hail-fellow-well-met Aussie charm that we’ve come to expect; Herc also grants
Becket the respect he deserves. That isn’t the case with Chuck, played by
Kazinsky — a relative newcomer — as an arrogant snot whose only saving grace is
ownership of an adorably sloppy bulldog.
Pentecost has a ward, Mako Mori
(Rinko Kikuchi), the now-grown survivor of a horrific kaiju attack that
terrified her as a child. Although she has trained just as hard as anybody
else, and wants desperately to co-pilot a Jaeger, Pentecost holds her back;
acknowledging her Japanese devotion to honor and respect, she complies.
Becket won’t have it. Recognizing
that he and Mako share the all-essential mind-meld compatibility necessary for
superior Jaeger control, he naturally rebels. (Cue the inter-personal tension.)
On top of which, Mako is
seriously cute.
Kikuchi brings unexpected
emotional gravity to these proceedings; as also is the case with Hunnam’s
Becket, we learn much about her personal tragedy. Mostly, though, Kikuchi makes
Mako interesting, and she effortlessly wins our hearts and minds.
A shout-out also goes to Mana
Ashida, who plays Mako’s younger self. This little girl brings frightening
intensity to a flashback sequence that explains her thirst for revenge.
We never get to know the Russian
or Chinese pilots, which is a shame. For openers, they look intriguing ... and,
more to the point, del Toro muffs this opportunity to make his film as
inclusively international as the storyline.
Comic relief is supplied by
Charlie Day and Burn Gorman, as Geiszler and Gottlieb, a pair of whack-job
scientists with way-outside-the-box views on how best to tackle the kaiju
“problem.” They’re the original odd couple: Day’s Geiszler is sloppy and dangerously
impulsive, while Gorman’s Gottlieb is fussy, prissy and just as misguidedly wary.
They’re obviously conceived, by del Toro and Beacham, as an entertaining
alternative to the boring, white-garbed scientist-types who customarily offer
dull-as-dishwater “explanations” in such films.
But we know right away that
salvation must lie with these nutball researchers, despite their tendency to
try Pentecost’s patience.
Finally, Ron Perlman — a familiar
face in del Toro’s films — pops up as Hannibal Chau, a Hong Kong-based black
marketeer who has made a fortune selling kaiju parts on the black market.
Perlman chews up the scenery in style; he’s the only actor, thus far, able to
give the late James Coburn’s devious ear-to-ear grin a run for its money.
Production designers Andrew
Neskoromny and Carol Spier have a field day with the opulent sets, from the
Loccent Command Center, home of the holographic computers that monitor the
kaiju battles, to Chau’s opulent “kaiju reclamation center.” Visual effects
supervisors John Knoll and James E. Price do equally well with the
city-leveling battle scenes; we’ve come a long way from the days when Godzilla
would stomp cardboard cities.
Much of the film’s persuasive,
pulse-pounding power comes from cinematographer Guillermo Navarro’s ability to
convey the essential sense of size and scale. Unfortunately, the 3D effects
were applied after the fact; although the results are better than most cases of
“fake 3D,” the finished film nonetheless suffers from the overly “dark” look that
is typical of retroactive enhancement.
Pacific Rim won’t win any
awards for originality, but that’s not an issue; del Toro and Beacham intend
their film as a genre homage, much the way George Lucas riffed classic westerns
in Star Wars, and Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich updated H.G. Wells in
1996’s Independence Day.
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