Review 231: Pacific Rim

Pacific Rim is a breathtaking Science fiction/Monster film, one of Guillermo del Toro's best films and a beautiful tribute to the Kaiju and Mecha genres.

Giant monsters identified as "Kaiju" arise from a crevice in the Pacific Ocean, resulting in a war which takes millions of lives and quickly consumes humanity's resources. To combat this new threat, a special type of weapon is designed: massive robots, known as Jaegers, which are controlled simultaneously by two pilots whose minds are locked in a neural bridge. As time passes, even the powerful Jaegers prove almost defenseless in the face of a relentless enemy. On its last stand and on the verge of defeat, the remaining defending forces of mankind have no choice but to turn to two unlikely heroes - a former pilot, Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) and an untested trainee Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) - who are teamed to drive a legendary but seemingly obsolete Jaeger from the early trials of the mechanical titans. Together, they must stand as the human race’s last hope against the mounting apocalypse.

The plot is simple but extremely effective. Watching this film, you get the sense that del Toro wanted to tell an earnest colorful story, with an "incredibly airy and light feel." At the point where the film picks up, it really is the Eleventh Hour; The Kaiju War has been raging for the good part of 20 years and the human race is really starting to realise that they're loosing. It's a film the encompasses both the Kaiju movie genre with the Giant Robot movie genre.

In the film, a Jaeger's neural load is too much for a single pilot to handle alone, meaning they must first be psychically linked to another pilot – a concept called "Drifting". When pilots drift, they quickly gain intimate knowledge of each other's memories and feelings and having no choice but to accept; del Toro has stated that he found this concepts dramatic potential compelling: "I really wanted to have this melodrama happening in the cockpit. I thought, 'What if there were two pilots, and they had to get to know each other really quick? When you Drift with someone, you know a lot about them in a few seconds – their virtues, their fears, their defects. And yet you have no choice but to accept them. I thought it was a compelling idea."

Del Toro expressed his intention that the empathy metaphors extend to real life saying: "The pilots' smaller stories actually makes a bigger point, which is that we're all together in the same robot (in life)... Either we get along or we die. I don't want this to be a recruitment ad or anything jingoistic. The idea of the movie is just for us to trust each other, to cross over barriers of colour, sex, beliefs, whatever and just stick together."
Del Toro has acknowledged this message’s simplicity, but stated that he would have liked to have seen  adventure films with similar morals when he was a child. The films ten main characters all have "little arcs" conducive to this idea with del Toro stating: "I think that's a great message to give kids...  'That guy you were beating the sh*t out of 10 minutes ago? That's the guy you have to work with 5 minutes later.' That's life...   We can only be complete if we work together."

The film also centers on the relationship between Becket and Mori, but it is not a love story in a conventional sense. Both are deeply damaged human beings who have decided to suppress their respective traumas. While learning to pilot their Jaeger, they undergo a process of "opening up", gaining access to each other's thoughts, memories and secrets. Their relationship is necessarily one of respect and "perfect trust". Actor Charlie Hunnam comments that the film is "a love story without a love story. It's about all of the necessary elements of love without arriving at love itself". Del Toro stated: "What was great is the character of Rinko is [the] same as Charlie's and had a big fall. They both lost a lot in the past and when they meet, one of the ideas in the script is that two people who are really, really hurt can become one, both in the realm of metaphorically or in life. They meet with their two empty pieces and connect almost like a puzzle."

Del Toro, a self-described pacifist, avoided what he termed "car commercial aesthetics" or "army recruitment video aesthetics", and gave the characters Western ranks including "marshal" and "ranger" rather than military ranks such as "captain", "major" or "general". The director stated: "I avoided making any kind of message that says war is good. We have enough firepower in the world." Del Toro has stated that it was his intention to make a film about "the world saving the world" as opposed to "a country saving the world."

 
The film also deals with the sub context of war: The humans fight against the monsters using machines to save their planet which makes it a really gritty look at what it would be like if we were under attack and it's not a story about a country saving the world, it's more about the world saving the world.
I also think that it's more realistic and more relatable and believable than normal blockbuster movies e.g. the threat in this movie are monsters that come from the sea which is actually quite frightening and taps into a primordial fear.

Yale University professor, Wai Chen Daimock connected the film’s central theme of togetherness to the recurring image of missing shoes: “This is the utopian dream driving all the robots and pilots.
The dream is that puny humans like us could be “together” - not in the specific neural melding that must take place between the two Jaeger pilots but also, more generally speaking, in a fractal web of resemblance, filling the world with copies of ourselves at varying orders of magnitude and with varying degrees of re-expression, beginning with the shies at our feet."

 
Guillermo del Toro's direction is magnificent, the cinematography is beautiful and captures the gritty beauty of a war torn future between the Kaiju and the Jaegers, the special effects are wonderfully crafted (del Toro always pays great attention to detail on his visuals), the production design is splendid, the humans base looks really dirty and industrial and it has a canteen were the soldiers eat their meals and their living quarters are cramped and are across each other. The Jaegers themselves are impecably crafted with excellent detail. The Russians
The score by Ramin Djawadi is brilliantly spectacular, the costumes are fantastic, the make up is rich, the action scenes are brutal, terrifying, tense, expertly staged and well choreographed, the tension is killing, the locations are stunning, it's well paced, the creature design is spectacular (the depictions of the Kaiju are extraordinary and strongly evokes legendary sea monsters such as the Kraken, Charybdis, Scylla and the Leviathan. They represent chaos and the destructive forces of nature. The scenery is breathtaking and the ending was superb.

The acting is fantastic, with the standouts being Charlie Hunnam, Rinko Kikuchi and Idris Elba, their comradely and chemistry is extremely powerful

Sons of Anarchy's Charlie Hunnam definately impressed playing Raleigh Becket. He is also someone who has suffered a giant loss. Not only has it killed his sense of self-worth, but also his will to fight and keep on going, And then, Mori and Pentecost, and a couple other people, bring him out of retirement to try to help with this grand push and his journey become about him getting back up. He has something enormous to prove. Hunnam brought an earnest, really honest nature - an earthly quality to the role that evoked Sam Worthington's Jake Sully from James Cameron's Avatar.

Rinko Kikuchi is badass as Mako Mori, like Becket she has also suffered a great loss but deep inside she has an inner strength and fury that should serve well against the Kaiju and I think she as a character serves as a great example of awesome feminine strength. She affected by the chaos of the Kaiju in a more mental way because of a childhood trauma that's haunted her for the majority of her life.

Idris Elba is fantastic playing Stacker Pentecost, Raleigh's commanding officer in Pan Pacific Defense Corps and Mako's adoptive father. Pentecost is the moral centre of the movie who brings a lot of authority to the story and characters. Elba makes us as an audience feel the emotional weight of the world that's he's carrying on his shoulders.

Ron Perlman is also very effective in this film as the treacherous, Hannibal Chau a black market dealer who makes a living dealing Kaiju organs

Robert Kazinsky is also terrific as Chuck Hansen, Chuck is the bully of the film. He's got a real chip on his shoulder and he treats everyone like dirt because he's been allowed to and he's an arrogant egotist and he has a right to be in a strange way because he's record holder for killing Kaiju and he's the best pilot on Earth and being one of the last he's kind of been allowed to do whatever he wants
The dynamic between him and Raleigh is very much of a classic hero and the bully. The two of the them don’t get along, neither of them like each other. You strongly get the sense of two individual personalities clashing and yet they have been thrown in a situation where they have to put their rivalry aside so that they can survive this Kaiju threat which beautifuly ties into the films central theme of togetherness.
That rivalry between the these characters should be seen as a strong message to young kids, especially to bullys.

Other actors who stand out for me are Charlie Day as Dr. Newton Geizler who is really funny but also really likeable in this, Burn Gorman who is terrifc as the tweed-wearing, crotchety scientist Dr. Hermann Gottlieb and

Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim is visually beautiful and sophisticated sci fi monster film and one that emanates an unabashed love for the Kaiju and Mecha genres, 5/5.

The Anonymous Critic.