Pacific Rim Review Part One

At the risk of having a review that's entirely too long, I decided to break up the review into to parts. the first part will be my review of the movie and the second part will be a synopsis for those who thought it was interesting, but wanted to know more about the movie. Enjoy.

My Review:

Well it was a brilliantly done film. It reminded me of Resident Evil: Retribution in some ways. IT seemed like there was a serious focus on making a quality product, but at the same time the material wasn't taken too seriously. There were a few moments where the filmmaker clearly had his tongue firmly planted in his cheek. There were a number of cheesy scenes in the movie, but it never seemed like they overwhelmed the overall feel of the movie. You really had to go along for the ride and just enjoy them.


I thoroughly enjoyed the story, but it wasn't without its flaws. There were two major problems with the story. The first is the fact that the story was VERY Japanese. While I loved this about the story, it was a little much for a North American audience. (sorry Canada, I meant the US) Most Americans don't have a taste for Anime let alone Japanese cinema in general. We (Americans ) all grew up watching Godzilla movies, but how many of us truly remember the stories. It was all about seeing a guy in a monster suit break some scale models. I have no delusions that the average American just wanted to see a giant monster get rocket punched in the face. The story to me was well done and well thought out. However, I have a poor track record of picking out what's cool as I've come to learn over the years. (no worries as I've made peace with it.)

The other major sticking point is the pace of the movie. Pacific Rim had a really weird pace. On one hand it seemed as though it moved much too fast, but on the other hand everything was explained. You really didn't miss anything and you could see that if they took their time then the movie would have been 3 hours long. Still the pace of the movie just didn't quite feel right.

The mecha design was well thought out. I mean piloting a giant robot must be a insanely complex task. It makes sense that it would take two people to pilot the Jaegers. And the mindmeld control system aka the "Drift" was nothing short of brillant. Unfortunately the  execution didn't quite feel right. I quickly got over it, but the way the pilots behaved just didn't seem realistic to me. Of course, it was at this point that I reminded myself "You can believe that there are Giant Robots fighting Giant Monsters, and THAT'S the part you have an issue with." Silly I know, but it still bugged me if only a little.

Also for a movie about robots fighting monsters. I expected to see more fights. Instead what I got was a bunch of best of clips. There were some REALLY good fights near the end, but it would have been nice to see some of the other Jaegers mentioned (particularly the Coyote Tango fight in defense of Sydney.). There was the sweet reward of seeing a ROCKET PUNCH TO THE FACE! Yeah... still got goosebumps from that and I saw the movie that Tuesday after opening weekend.

One of my favorite parts of the movie was the fact that there was no use of profanity and no nudity or even the hint of nudity. This is no small feat given a movie of this caliber. How many movies can you take a small child to and not worry about them seeing or hearing something that they shouldn't have? (Yeah I'm looking at you Transformers)

All in all I love the movie and in another rare first. I plan to ignore cost and buy the movie as soon as it comes out on DVD. I give the movie four and a half Giants... out of five.