Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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Starring: Idris Elba, Charlie Hunnam, Rinko Kikuchi, Ron Perlman, Charlie Day
Directed by: Guillermo del Toro
Running time: 132 minutes
It’s a clunky piece of irony, but Pacific Rim is a celebration of analog made possible by digital technology.
A pixelated cheese puff of matinee storytelling that features an epic war between alien monsters and all humankind, this new movie from new-school horror maestro Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy) affirms more than a few old-school movie truths as it stomps down Main Street, cargo ship in hand.
For starters, we have no marquee star and it doesn’t matter one bit. Though Idris Elba (Prometheus, Thor) and Charlie Hunnam (Sons of Anarchy) have solid CVs, they don’t have the name recognition of a Tom Cruise or a Bruce Willis.
As a result, Pacific Rim is cleared of the brand clutter that can mess up the overall message of a given entertainment product. Del Toro didn’t have to provide jutting jaw close-ups of his male cast, nor did he have to sacrifice his artistic vision to placate a monstrous ego.
By opting for a largely English cast and non-American locales, Pacific Rim immediately sets itself apart from the Roland Emmerich school of schlock destruction where a hero draped in red, white and blue manages to overcome the odds to save the day.
Del Toro still offers up plenty of brave warriors, but this is one of the few versions of the apocalypse with a truly global perspective instead of the standard American myopia. In most Hollywood movies, the most we see of other nations is a cursory montage of the Eiffel Tower falling or the Kremlin going up in smoke.
The entire last act of Pacific Rim takes place in Hong Kong, where humanity’s last hope is holed up in a giant hangar populated by an international army of rag-tag pilots and mechanics who service the Jaeger program.
Born out of necessity, Jaegers are gigantic robotic machines loaded with a variety of advanced weaponry and armour. They look a lot like Transformers, except they stand as tall as a skyscraper and do not collapse into a Camaro once their job is done.
Jaegers are the only thing capable of stopping the Kaiju, the alien monsters invading Earth via a sub-oceanic portal along a seismic fault line in the Pacific called “the rift.”
At the beginning of the alien war, Jaegers were highly effective at killing Kaiju. But the Kaiju keep adapting and their numbers keep growing, while the Jaegers become obsolete and too expensive to build for a planet scarce on resources and infrastructure.
There is only a handful of Jaegers left, and for commander Stacker Pentecost (Elba), they represent humanity’s last chance.
At this point in time we’ve not only swallowed the insanity of the giant monsters, we’ve embraced the whole premise that blends the very best of Blade Runner with Godzilla because in the end these are movies about what it means to be human.
After all, the Jaegers may be giant machines, but they depend on the ephemeral human essence: The control interface is mental, and the cockpit demands two pilots working in tandem, feeling each other’s thoughts and impulses in what’s called “the drift.”
This element of co-operation is critical, and perhaps a less obvious proof of del Toro’s internationalist approach, because it stops the standard hero story in its tracks.
There is no Tom Cruise to save the day solo; everyone in this movie has to work together as a team in order to succeed — even the geeky science guys.
But this movie makes a statement about humanity’s primitive drive to build walls, accumulate money and possessions, and most cunningly, our communal tendency toward violence.
It’s a lot to chew, but del Toro’s mandibles are monster-sized and his appetite for storytelling insatiable. So even if 85 per cent of the images on screen are entirely computer-generated, they all reflect the core human experience, and that lets Pacific Rim stand head, shoulders and an Empire State Building above the rest because it’s also a whole lot of fun to watch.
This apocalypse may be made of pixels, but its glowing, sacred heart is all analog, redeeming the increasingly gratuitous use of special effects in big-budget spectacle, as well as the enduring and entirely noble power of a people united.
CAPSULE REVIEW: Pacific Rim – Director Guillermo del Toro blends the best of Godzilla and Blade Runner in this story of an epic war between extra-terrestrial monsters and human beings. Though it’s loud and silly, del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) understands the importance of the human element and crafts a film that exploits B-movie tradition with intelligence and humour, making for a surprisingly fun ride that feels perfectly suited for the season. Rating: Three and a half stars out of five. – Katherine Monk