It’s been a long time coming but we finally have a giant monster invasion movie that brings back memories of the old Godzilla films. There have been countless films over the last few years that deals with the apocalypse and extinction of man as we know it. But director Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim is by far the most entertaining. Toro is living the ultimate dream of playing with toys that is stylishly created to battle monsters whose CGI is a wonder to behold. While there isn’t much of a deep rooted storyline, there is enough exposition in the beginning of the film before the title appears to give us the audience all the background required to just sit back and enjoy the carnage that will follow.
In short, an army of sea monsters known as Kaiju rise up from the depths of the Pacific ocean and destroy cities and take millions of lives in the process. Humanity wages war against the Kaiju by developing massive sized human controlled robots called Jaegers. These Jaegers have two pilots whose minds are joined together like a Vulcan mind meld that will control the robots movements.
Pacific Rim stars Charlie Hunnam (Son’s of Anarchy) as a pilot whose life was personally affected during the opening scenes but himself in the middle of humanities last ditch effort to save mankind. Hunnam is very good as the films lead. Along with Hunnam, the supporting cast is also a treat to watch led by Rinko Kikuchi, Idris Elba, Ron Perlman (Hellboy & SOA), Charlie Day and Burn Gorman.
Personally I highly recommend seeing this in 3D. So many films lately are shown in 3D for no rhyme or reason other than the extra buck. But with Pacific Rim, the 3D experience only enhances the films enjoyment. Go out, get some popcorn and some soda, kick back in your seat and enjoy rock’em sock’em robots come to life.
Finally, on a separate note, with a new Godzilla film hitting theaters in 2014, my optimism has now grown thanks in large part to Pacific Rim.The technology is there to finally make an updated version of the famous fire breathing, Tokyodestroying monster that we all know and love. And while we’re at it, who knows maybe another larger than life defender of the universe may make his feature film debut in the not so distant future… cough, cough… Voltron. We shall see.
PACIFIC RIM *** (out of 4)
PACIFIC RIM *** (out of 4)
May the Dork be with you,
JPB
The Dork Knight
