Movie Review: 'Pacific Rim'

art by Richard Davies

SPOILER ALERT: I Loved this! This is what your big summer popcorn blockbusters should be all about!

From the trailers you get the simple premise about this film, "as a war between humankind and monstrous sea creatures wages on, a former pilot (Charlie Hunnam) and a trainee (Rinko Kikuchi) are paired up to drive a seemingly obsolete special weapon in a desperate effort to save the world from the apocalypse." Yes, it uses the familiar tropes from various movies ('Independence Day' immediately popped into my head when watching this), and, essentially, what you see is what you get, but don't let that diminish the feeling of fun when watching this film.

I'm sure the so-called 'critics' that have shot down this film, have done so more on the basis of how could a director, that has made 'The Devil's Backbone' or 'Pan's Labyrinth', stoop so low to come up with a movie like this? But this is Guillermo del Toro, and from the vampires of 'Cronos', the ghost story of 'The Devil's Backbone' and to his twisted fairytale 'Pan's Labyrinth', his films come from his passions, and as a loveletter to the Kaiju and mecha films of Japan, 'Pacific Rim' is no different and deserves it's rightful place alongside his other films.

But back to the film, and it really is a simple story, of good old heroism overcoming monstrous adversity and saving the day. The Kaiju and Jaegers are impressive and the fight scenes, although with not quite as much carnage and destruction as 'Man Of Steel', still hit the spot and are the definite highlights of the film. The characters are standard fare for this type of movie; the washed up hero back for redemption, the untested rookie, the stereotypical other pilots, the leader of the crew who used to be one of the pilots (along with the typical inspiring speech before the end), the arrogant pilot who goes up against the hero, the bickering scientists, it's all there and there to be enjoyed.

I loved this film for exactly for what it is, a big dumb rollercoaster blockbuster of a movie, but oh, what a ride it was!

***** out of 5