Pacific Rim - Review

I really liked Guillermo Del Toro's Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, as well as Blade 2 and his first Hellboy movie  I haven't seen Pan's Labyrinth but I heard it received great reviews.  And so, it hurts me to say that I thought Pacific Rim was only alright... It wasn't great, but it wasn't horrible either, just plain mediocre.

I would first like to say that the special effects were amazing!  The giant monsters, called Kaiju, and the giant robots that were piloted by two "compatible" humans, called Jaegers, were well done and the action sequences were breathtaking.  I wonder if the makers of the new Godzilla film will be using this effects team because Pacific Rim really felt like a throwback to those Japanese Godzilla/monster destruction films and giant robot series such as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers or Gundam.  The basic premise of the film is the survival of humanity as they use Jaegers to fight off the Kaiju that emerge from some wormhole/portal in the Pacific Ocean, and the film was successful in portraying such battles.

That having been said, the rest of the film falls short with respect to story and character performances.  The story is predictable, but I don't really judge on predictability that much because storytelling has a basic formula, and every now and then there are twists thrown in, but everything is a variation on the main structure.  An action film of this genre will either have the predictable feel-good happy ending that everyone expects in the end since that is 99% of all Hollywood films, or a twist that may lead to a sequel.  Given that a possible fork down the road is already in place, predictability and how a story turns out isn't important to me, only the content.

As for the characters, I could not find myself to care much about them at all.  I really wanted to.  I've never seen Sons of Anarchy so this is the first time I've seen Charles Hunnam starring in a role.  As a viewer, I wasn't given any material to become emotionally involved with his character.  Sure, you get his backstory during the film's introduction before the title screen, but there is never anything to really make you feel connected to the character.  The same goes for lead actress Rinko Kikuchi.  I want to get back to her backstory because it was actually the most interesting part to me in this movie.  I did not feel the chemistry between the two main characters of the story.  I did not even understand why they were "compatible" to operate a Jaeger in the first place, but I think the fault is in the writing because there didn't seem to be material for the actors to work with to develop their relationships in the story.  This is the same for the character played by Idris Elba, of whom I am a fan.  The primary actors did just fine for their roles, it's just that the relationships and dimensionality of the characters weren't explored and so I found myself indifferent to them.  For example, without spoiling anything in the film, the most interesting relationship that I was invested in was between Elba's Stacker Pentecost and Kikuchi's Mako Mori but it was never examined.

To round out the important players, Charlie Day and Burn Gorman (cool name by the way, he was that creepy right-hand man of Daggett's in The Dark Knight Rises who chose exile and plunged to his death in the river), the two scientists, were supposed to be there for comedic purposes I guess but neither were very amusing, and I'm sorry but I find Day's voice kind of annoying so that didn't help the performance.  Ron Perlman, a regular in Guillermo's body of work, wasn't given a three-dimensional character to work with but he made the most of his brief screen-time and was fun.

There was a lone shining star, however, and her name is Mana Ashida.  I gave this film an extra point because of her.  This little girl plays the younger version of Mako Mori in the flashback/memory sequences, and she was absolutely brilliant!  In my eyes, she gave the best performance of the entire movie.  In the brief sequence that we get to see her, and even when I rewatch her scenes, she nearly brings tears to my eyes.  I was really moved by her powerful emotional conveyance of terror and fear and solace, and I wanted to see more of her and how her relationship with Elba's Pentecost develops.  They clearly have a strong bond in the film but we only get a snippet of why.  This was a huge opportunity missed, in my opinion.  Mana Ashida is adorable and very deserving of more screen time, in this film and in her future work, and her short performance is worth watching this film.

To sum everything up, the story is pretty generic without many twists and turns with an interesting concept that could've been explored better, the characters are bland and poorly written and the actors deserved more profound substance to work with, but the action sequences and special effects were spectacular.  I felt that the writing could have been better with respect to character development; I really wanted to be emotionally invested in the characters.  There were many opportunities missed that could have made this film much better, but unfortunately no one took the gamble to shoot for more.  Guillermo Del Toro delivers a solid good action-packed film but Pacific Rim leaves you wanting more and, for some, imagining what could have been.  The only thing I would rewatch would be Mana's performance about 50 minutes into the movie along with her second appearance about 10 minutes after that one.  Cheers!

6/10