Pacific Grim

 (Pacific Rim Review And Rant By Neamo)

Complimenting a film when it's good is a fine and noble thing to do. This is a film that inspires no such nobility in me, nor does it's director. Prepare yourselves, it's about to get bitter.

With the world in ruin after the emergence of Kaiju's, Cthulian horrors that if left to their own devices would make a straight and steady beeline for Japan, emerge one after the other from a rift beneath the ocean and wreathe international havoc upon any nation in their path. To combat this new threat, all of the nations of the world unite to produce the most stereotypical and impractical defense form this world has ever seen, mecha's, or to the blissfully ignorant of you, enormous humanoid robots piloted by the young and emotionally damaged. Created in order to manhandle the beasts without conventional bullets for fear of their toxin filled blood seeping into the ocean below, these hulking titans of advanced engineering are powered by on board nuclear reactors, and wade into battle with all the grace and durability of rock-em sock-em robots, a flaw not missed by detractors. When our would be hero, Raleigh Becket boards the ineptly named Gipsy Danger, with his brother who we'll refer to as meat, we see a world far changed from the golden age of hope and prosperity. We also see why. Requiring two pilots in order to balance the strain of the mecha, or jaeger's AI system, it lurches predictably forward, swinging it's fists like a pair of glorified pillows against the armed rapist of it's tentacled foe, and while trickery is engaged, meat is quickly cleaved free from his brother in a scene so predictable and vapid that it could have been penned in crayon. A ladle of angst and a hasty government closure later, we see Raleigh working as a new age navvy on an international coastal wall, soon to be rubble. Can things end here? Of course not. Re-opening the jaeger project, a government official drags Raleigh back into the chair, and finds him an Asian co-pilot who quickly becomes the female love interest of our traumatized hero. With a rebuilt Gipsy Danger ready to breach the shore and take on the abyssal horrors, a plot is devised to nuke the breach, something before untested, and while a smaller sub plot involving a scientist mentally linking himself to the Kaiju appears, it ultimately goes nowhere and panders to nothing. There is a side 'villain' in the aggressive Australian, who dies predictably in a moment of redemption, and ultimately Gipsy Danger must swan dive into the void riding a Kaiju, which it does before detonating it's nuclear reactor. Earth's victory is secured.

What's that? I skipped and skimmed through the plot? Well frankly, I had to. It's a complicated, boring and trite affair that climbs the footholds of classic anime like a drunk baby supported by a guide wire, and while it covers a lot of ground, none of it is new. It's a mess, frankly. Boring for the most part, particularly in the exploratory quest for a Kaiju brain which leads to a half assed Ron Pearlman experiment, the only real joy to be garnered from the spouting nonsense is in the fight scenes, and they themselves make little to no sense. With fists that damage little, these shambling hulks of steel have no agility in water, and the only effective weapon shown is a sword that snaps out at the literal last moment. It begs the question, why not just wield your fucking sword from the offset? Why indulge in this fetishistic foreplay with the minions of the under dark when you have a light saber at your disposal? Why in fact not make the machines to be run by the computers that so clearly bear the reticent bulk of their creation and have them be controlled remotely? If we want to go further, why the hell would we go with mecha's to begin with, in lieu of other more effective methods of disposal, such as a seething cloud of swarming drones? I asked this, and I must refer to an answer stated rather plainly by someone trying to defend the film and it's premise. 'Well, having giant robots fight giant monsters is pretty much the only way to have a movie about giant robots fighting giant monsters.' That's it in a nutshell. That is why I am frankly disinterested in the plot and the premise, and it's a beautiful summation. This was never a film, and for all the plot points it attempts to tout and references to promote, this abortion of cinematic values holds no sway. This film in it's entirely is about Guillermo del Toro attempting to show all and sundry his sketchbook in an act of unintelligent, self serving hedonism that proclaims itself a love letter to something greater. It isn't, it's balderdash.

The acting of this film is difficult to gauge, mainly because there is little to be seen of it anywhere. As such I'm not going to talk of it. I can't find it. There is no believable raw emotion, and every actor who took part in this sham should feel utterly ashamed of themselves for such blatant fan service in the face of actual performance. Instead I'm going to talk of the CGI. The CGI is good, certainly. It wasn't the magnificent leap of engineering I had heard it touted to be, that mark lays firmly with Avatar which to this day remains the most visually impressive computer generated film, though sadly it too is woefully lacking in all other areas. It looks decent enough, the water looked much as water does, the mecha's looked a little like Michael Bay rejects and the monsters like rubbery children's drawings, but they were rendered well, so there's that. The sound track might as well have been non existent to me for the impact it had, and likewise all other assets of the film simply weren't memorable. I know these were things that existed, just as I know there were indeed actors of flesh and bone who drifted lazily on screen, but that is the extent of my care of the matter.

Guillermo Del Toro is a director of whom frankly you should expect more. Able to work well with a lesser budget, he has produced some of the most fascinating films I've ever seen, in their conception and production. I must admit, these are Spanish films that were made on virtual shoestrings, but they are good in of themselves, fantastic to watch and a treat of general magnificence, The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth amongst them. While not all of his films are hits, he has the spark of brilliance in him, so to see him direct and write something like this is much akin to seeing a drunken Beethoven shit in his own piano, to raucous applause I'm horrified to say.

If I were given the chance to see this film again, I would choose not to. When I say I would rather be publicly castrated than have to endure it or it's smirking and self satisfied fans, I am not overstating. Watch Pan's Labyrinth or The Devil's Backbone instead.