Review:"Pacific Rim"

del TORO, Guillermo (Dir.), “Pacific Rim”, Warner Bros./Legendary Pictures, 2013.

I never go to the cinema seeking to watch any particular film: with the vagaries of public transport and the distances required to get to the nearest picture theatres, I generally show up and then see what’s on. So, while I did see this flick at the cinema last year, I didn’t actually plan on seeing it – if you get my drift.

At that time, I came away with vague and unformed notions about what this film was trying to do. On one level, it felt like watching someone else play “Godzilla Unleashed” on the PlayStation^®: lots of beasties going mano-a-mano in an oversized swimming pool. On that basis it felt like I’d been suckered into watching the movie version of Battleships^®, voiding my decision to veto that particular film after seeing the trailers. On balance I felt as though I’d not wasted my cash, but I was left with a vague sense of being unfulfilled.

It’s pretty obvious that the movie is a love note to Japanese monster movies, and the kaiju in this movie all look like they might well be performed by guys in (heavy, un-ventilated) rubber suits. However, this being del Toro, they also look like they’d scare the scales off Gojira if ever they met. Some extravagant monster-making went into these bad boys and they terrify and surprise in equal measure, not only because they are HUGE, but because the action sequences never let you forget that you’re just a flyspeck compared to them. The jaegers – giant attack robots driven by paired teams of consciousness-sharing pilots – are also hallmarks of the Japanese monster films and their construction, maintenance and operation are where we get to see our heroes hard at work to prevent the apocalypse from happening.

The basic plot of the film is that there’s a dimensional rift at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and the kaiju erupt through this and go marauding on the shores of this paddling pool, causing massive destruction. Humanity responds by creating the jaegers and taking the fight back to them. So far so good, except that the kaiju are getting bigger and more resourceful and the jaegers can’t be patched up and sent back out quickly enough. In the face of a world government decision to ditch the jaegers and just build a huge wall around the Pacific’s margins – something that doesn’t seem likely to succeed as the devastation of Sydney early on demonstrates – the jaeger forces rally in Hong Kong for one last-ditch effort to seal the breach and end the war.

It’s an easily digested premise. The jaeger pilots are presented as rock stars with idiosyncratic styles and attitudes, each with a named fighting machine that suits their style. We are introduced to our hero, Raleigh Becket, who’s one half of the team which pilots the “Gipsy Danger”: they affect the coats and attitudes of World War Two fighter pilots, complete with the sheepskin-lined bomber jackets. Early in the film, Raleigh and his brother Yancy get attacked by a kaiju code-named “Knife-head” and Yancy gets torn right out of the cockpit to die horribly. Raleigh, still psychically connected to his brother, is traumatised, but manages to walk his jaeger home. He quits soon after, to go and help build the Pacific Rim Wall in Alaska, but is soon recalled by the jaeger forces for the eleventh hour attack upon the breach.

At this point, the average viewer might expect that the rest of the film will be a train-ride to an expected ending and, in less capable hands, this would definitely be the case. But this is del Toro we’re talking about here, and he mixes things up to save the day.

This film is not so much about monsters attacking, a big battle ensuing, and the monsters getting their butts kicked; it’s a story about trust. Within the Shatterdome – the jaeger base in Hongkers – everyone is tense and no-one is sure what’s going to roll off the kaiju production line next. The jaeger crews are competitive and hot-headed; the military leaders are draconian and demanding; even the science geeks can’t see eye-to-eye: in this atmosphere of disarray and disunity, the monsters attack and things go badly for the good guys.

The Drift – the psychic connexion which the pilot teams must establish in order to run their fighting mecha – gives the director many shorthand ways of conveying information about the plot, the creatures and the uncertainties existing between the main characters: at one point, Raleigh becomes privy to the memories of his new co-pilot and gains insights into the motivations of his co-workers in a sequence that is far more entertaining than a bald verbal explanation would have been. The stakes are driven up sharply too, when the boffins in the lab start experimenting by Drifting with the kaiju and it becomes obvious that the monsters are profiting equally from the two-way info transfer that the Drift provides.

The ending, even with del Toro guiding things, is actually not all that hard to predict: the genre informs the outcome, in the final analysis. This is a film where you have to enjoy the ride, and not waste your time worrying about the destination. The raisons d’etre here are the big fights with the big robots and the big beasties. These have been invested with enough detail and backstory to make them credible: at no time does disbelief feel compelled to stagger out of its comfy hammock and raise an objection. Of course, after the pre-production work that del Toro put into “Pan’s Labyrinth”, we’ve come to expect this degree of quality world-building from him.

If I have quibbles, they fall mainly under the category of the weakness of the genre – the Japanese monster flick doesn’t lend itself to anything other than spectacle, and character development suffers as a result. In this instance, I would have preferred to see more development of the characters – the Russian and the Korean pilot teams are sketchy to say the least – and most of the rest of the cast are just broad-stroke stereotypes. Some of the cast – Idris Elba, Ron Perlman, and Charlie Day and "Torchwood's" Burn Gorman (the guys who play the boffins) – are capable enough to finesse these broad canvasses and make them work; other actors have obviously been cast for purely physical reasons and their acting skills are sufficient to allow them to skate through without being brilliant.

(And on a side note, would it have been so hard to find an actor who could provide a reasonable Australian accent? Max Martini seems to be the “go-to” guy for an Aussie twang in Hollywood, as evidenced by his work on “The Unit” and elsewhere, and, to give him credit, he almost pulls it off. Making it sound right is a real high-wire act though and, if it’s wrong, suddenly you have an entire continent of viewers wincing over their popcorn. The British guy playing Max’s son in this film is an exemplar of how it’s absolutely not done.)

If you’ve seen del Toro’s film “Mimic” (and if you haven’t, why not?), you’ll be reminded very strongly of that film while watching this one. Both films begin with a montage of ‘found’ footage to quickly paint a background that brings the viewer up to speed; both films are also obsessed with shoes. Don’t believe me? Check it for yourself. There’s also – for those who have done their homework – a cheeky nod to Mike Mignola’s “The Amazing Screw-On Head”, which had me smirking.

In the lead-up to this film, I was disappointed that del Toro had nixed work on his proposed version of “At The Mountains Of Madness” (although, with Tom Cruise tagged to headline and the production company insisting on something less than an R rating, I’m kind of glad it never happened) and that he walked (mostly) away from “The Hobbit”; after seeing this film it felt like a complete anticlimax, like he was just paying the rent. After all, this is a guy with an Oscar^® under his belt for – let’s face it – a horror film, in a culture where horror equals ‘paranormal romance’ (ick!) more often than not. “Pacific Rim” feels like afternoon tea – something to tide you over until dinnertime; I just hope that dinner will be worth waiting for!

Three-and-a-half tentacled horrors.