Pacific Dim? – Pacific Rim

1. The film wastes no time in setting up the story: that in 2013 (hey…) a dimensional rift opened in the Pacific and out came Kaiju, giant hulking beasts that stomped through cities before military forces could stop them. And they kept coming, And coming. To fight them, Jaegers were built, skyscraper tall machines piloted by two people bonded by a neural connection that let’s them pilot their bot as the left and right halves of its brain. This neural crap is moderately neat, though it feels forced as a means to inject added drama into FX slugfests. The two pilots look delightfully goofy as they walk in unison inside the head/cockpit (rather like the opening to a round of Bust a Groove). The neural connection is known as “drifting,” and this leads to a wonderfully awful phrase spoken by one character to another: “We are drift compatible.” I’m going to use that the next time I try to pick up a hot babe. It can’t possibly hurt my already abysmal batting average.
2. Charlie Hunnam (on sabbatical from the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, Redwood Original) stars as Raleigh Becket, an excellent Jaeger pilot who washes out after an unexpected tragedy on a mission. When pressed back into service by Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba), he’s gets his old Jaeger back, and a hot babe co-pilot (Rinko Kikuchi) to boot. The intimacy of two people sharing thoughts in high danger situations isn’t mined that much, though it is intriguing that many of the pilots are related, either as parent and child or siblings. The script doesn’t go in the obvious romance direction for the two leads, and that’s one of the few deft touches in this ham-handed affair. Props given.
3. Yet, those pros aside, be prepared to get bored out of your skull for most of the middle of the movie, as you drum your fingers on the armrest, your mind wanders and you wonder “Weren’t there monsters and robots in this thing? Did they skip a reel or something? Do they still use reels at this theater? Did I leave the iron on?”
4. Remember Tim Blake Nelson as Samuel Sterns in The Incredible Hulk? Remember how overacted that character was, so much so that you almost expected him to start spinning around on the floor yelling woowoowoo like Curly Howard? There are two scientists who have a good deal of screen time in this film, researching both the dimensional rift and the Kaiju that barf out of it. They’re just as awful as Nelson/Sterns was. You’ll want to bash their heads together like two coconuts. And they never get eaten. For shame.
5. The “revelations” in this movie are surprises only to those onscreen. To the rest of us, they’re the sorts of things that would have been surmised, oh, probably in week one of this invasion, not year seven. I think I may have muttered an audible “Well, duh” as our moron men of science puzzled out what was sending the Kaiju through the rift. (It’s a dead heat of clueless between these clowns and the idiots from Prometheus, i.e. the mapmaker who didn’t know left from right and the guy who suddenly decided it would be fun to pet the Cyclops snake thing.)
6. The Jaegers are triumphs of design, and it’s clear more thought went into them than polishing up the at times leaden script. By the story’s main body there are only four Jaeger’s left, as the Kaiju have grown larger and more adept at dispatching them. Gipsy Danger (seen in the poster on page one) is Raleigh’s rig, a nuclear-powered, old-school bot from the good old U. S. of A. Cherno Alpha, Russia’s (seen above), is perfect for a country still not free from its old Soviet past, as it looks to be powered by steam and held together by baling wire. Stalin would be proud. (I had to double-check, but one of Cherno Alpha’s pilots is played by a terrifyingly huge guy who used to wrestle in the WWF as Kurrgan.) Triplets pilot China’s three-armed Crimson Typhoon, the finest Jaeger that a totalitarian regime and slave labor can buy. Last but not least is Striker Eureka from Australia, which is Crocodile Dundee in Jaeger form. Thought went into these behemoths, and they’re each instantly distinguishable from one another, something Michael Bay and his hideously overdesigned Transformers could learn from.
7. In action the Jaeger’s are a delight, though the screenwriters, in an effort to amp up the danger in the final act, kill off two of them and their pilots after we’ve seen them doing their thing for all of a minute. Fortunately, the remaining two (but mainly one) have plenty of time to shine, especially in a big brawl on Hong Kong’s docks and in her streets. Elbow rockets assist punches, freight cars are picked up and held in clenched fists like rolls of nickels, and plasma cannons blast holes in Kaiju bellies. Awesome. But…
8. It’s a poorly kept secret that CGI scenes set at night are much easier — and much cheaper — to produce, and Rim makes full use of that. All the action set pieces are either set at night or underwater — hence this post’s “Pacific Dim” title. This may be the murkiest big summer release since The Abyss. And while it’s viscerally gratifying that these battles devolve into slugfests, you kind of wish the people charged with humanity’s defense would pause and figure out a little strategy now and again. Or maybe even figure out when would be the best time to deploy some of their super-weapons — or even remember that they have them. I’m sure there will be many others who will have the same internal reaction I did when one of these weapons is belatedly used (profanity ahead, so cover the kids’ eyes): WHY DIDN’T THEY USE THE FUCKING SWORD AT THE START OF THIS FIGHT?
9. Ron Perlman is in this, as a black market profiteer wearing goofy sunglasses and gilded shoes. He never crosses paths with Hunnam, though, so no Sons of Anarchy reunion. Or rally, as it were.
10. The ending is somewhat similar to what we had in Independence Day — in subtle and not so subtle ways. It’s possible that Independence Day is a smarter movie, too. In a relative sense, of course. Chew on that.

Pacific Rim will surely satisfy the cravings of those who love their Godzilla flicks and Battletech RPGs, and it’s far from the worst summer movie I’ve ever seen. You can see many of the dollars spent up there on the screen. But it’s disappointingly dumb, and that will turn off many viewers. Del Toro is better than this. Two and a half drifting pilots out of five:

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