Pacific Rim

Who doesn’t like giant robots? That is the deep, philosophical question at the heart of Guillermo Del Toro‘s Pacific Rim. If the answer that pops into your head is “nobody, obviously,” then this is definitely the movie for you. However, if you need a little bit more…

Years ago, giant monsters started to arise from an interdimensional portal in the depths of the Pacific Ocean to ravage human cities. When traditional armies proved unequal to the task, the governments of the world combined to build equally giant robots, in a move seemingly designed to give the people of the world the choice between having their cities destroyed by giant monsters or giant robots.

The main point of this thing is to get giant robots fighting giant monsters as often and violently as possible, and that is where all the effort in the making of it has gone. And gone to good effect. By his own admission, Del Toro is only good at making two things, scary monster movies and action monster movies, and Pacific Rim is clearly one of the latter not just in outlook but in execution, with a quality level reminiscent of Hellboy 2 and Blade 2, and a similar mix of world-building and action.

As quickly as the Jaeger program is built up, it’s just as summarily shut down, with our self-described “rock star Jaeger pilots” quickly reduced to has-beens forced to scrounge parts where they can or work construction on the “Life Wall” humanity’s survivors intend to hide behind, so that we can have our rock star heroes be the underdogs big-budget action films tend to require.

Two underdogs, in particular: Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam), once one of the program’s best and brightest until his brother was killed before his eyes, and Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), a Jaeger expert with reasons of her own for wanting to fight monsters. Because it takes two pilots working in tandem to handle such a machine, the pilots must share their thoughts and minds, potentially even their personalities, completely. It’s an intriguing notion, one opening up all kinds of possibilities for character interaction and conflict.

And one almost completely ignored, barring its ability to allow backstory exposition, in favor of far more clichéd meanderings that have wandered over from a repeat of Top Gun. There are those who call cliché’s battle-tested storytelling devices, and fair enough, but at a certain point they just become repetitive, and if you’ve ever seen another action movie before, there is nothing new or interesting about the people who live in the Pacific Rim universe Del Toro has so meticulously created. And that’s only talking about the ones who actually get to speak — most of the robot pilots are defined entirely by their look and the country they come from.

It’s abundantly clear what everyone is most interested in are the robots and the robot fighting. The colorful battles and fantastic visuals, courtesy of cinematographer Guillermo Navarro and the wizards at Industrial Light and Magic, are excellent, though they might give you epilepsy, particularly the fight in a downtown Asian metropolis.

But for all the sturm und drang, the robots can only remain on screen for so long, and when the people show up, the lack of depth or humanity drags Pacific Rim way down. It’s particularly disappointing from a director like Del Toro, who has frequently shown a preference for developing well-rounded, often surprising characters to inhabit his intricately detailed worlds.

But not this time. This time it’s all about the giant engines of destruction pounding on each other — like the recent torture-porn craze of horror films expanded to city-level scale — covered over by elements pulled from dozens of other movies. It’s enjoyable enough on a visceral level — Del Toro is too skilled a craftsman for it to be otherwise — but underneath all the destruction, there’s very little to Pacific Rim at all.

Cast: Charlie Hunnam as Raleigh Becket; Idris Elba as Stacker Pentecost; Rinko Kikuchi as Mako Mori; Robert Kazinsky as Chuck Hansen; Max Martini as Herc Hansen; Charlie Day as Dr. Newton Geizler; Burn Gorman as Dr. Hermann Gottlieb; Clifton Collins, Jr. as Tendo Choi; Ron Perlman as Hannibal Chau; Ellen McLain as voice of the Jaeger AI; Robert Maillet as Lt. Aleksis Kaidanovsky; Heather Doerksen as Lt. Sasha Kaidanovsky; Diego Klattenhoff as Yancy Becket.