'Pacific Rim' review: Adult brains will shut down
Charlie Hunnam as Raleigh Becket, left, and Rinko Kikuchi as Mako Mori in a scene from "Pacific Rim." Credit: AP
I love playing make-believe with my 5-year-old son, who has no use whatsoever for narrative structure, the laws of physics or simple logic. Swords outdraw pistols, stuffed animals develop superpowers, the Lightning Duplo Jet battles the Thunder Pirate Car in outer space. It's all very endearing, even though my adult brain shuts down after about an hour of incoherent playtime.
"Pacific Rim," a movie about giant sea monsters, called Kaiju, versus giant robots, called Jaegers, feels for all the world like it was made by a 5-year-old, but it was directed and co-written by Guillermo del Toro, who is 48. It lasts more than two hours. And there is nothing endearing about it.
It's a departure for Del Toro, whose distinctive style has elevated the horror and comic-book genres ("Pan's Labyrinth," "Hellboy"). Here, he's indulging his inner fanboy, the one who watched countless monster movies and reruns of "Giant Robot" hoping to one day make his own big-screen version. He has succeeded: In terms of acting, dialogue and overall intelligibility, "Pacific Rim" is every bit the equal of, say, 1974's "Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla."
"Pacific Rim" floats in a fantasy realm completely detached from grown-up reality. To fight the Jurassic-looking Kaiju, humans somehow dreamed up edifice-size robots. Each Jaeger is powered by at least two mind-melded soldiers who simultaneously choreograph its martial-arts moves. (Think "Real Steel.") The machines' fanciful nicknames -- Crimson Typhoon, Gipsy Danger -- sound more like Hot Wheels than World War II bombers, but then the platoon's commander is named Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba).
The story lines are mere formalities: A chaste, eew-free romance blossoms between Jaeger veteran Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam, looking slightly concussed) and rookie Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi, hair highlighted with manga blue), while an excitable scientist (Charlie Day, providing comic unrelief) searches for a black-market Kaiju-parts dealer (Ron Perelman) who may have deeper answers.
"Pacific Rim" is basically del Toro sprawled on his bedroom floor, staging endless battles between a multipack of toy dinosaurs and a handful of Transformers. I'm impressed by his imaginative spirit ("creativity" seems not quite the right word), and he must have had fun with his reported $180 million budget. Watching "Pacific Rim," though, my adult brain shut down after about 10 minutes.
"Pacific Rim," opening Friday, harks back to one of Japan's greatest exports -- those cheesy monster movies of the '50s and '60s -- but done on a larger scale. Here are some of the most memorable big-screen creatures who chewed up the scenery -- and half of Tokyo.
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