Thursday 11 July 2013

Film Review: "Pacific Rim" (2013).




"Today... At the edge of our hope, at the end of our time, we have chosen not only to believe in ourselves, but in each other. Today... we face the monsters that are at our door and bring the fight to them! Today, we are canceling the apocalypse!" Which is why you should get excited for Pacific Rim. This Science Fiction Kaiju film directed by Guillermo del Toro. The film is set in the near future where soldiers pilot giant Mechas into battle against invading giant monsters who have risen from a portal beneath the ocean. As the war between humankind and the monstrous sea creatures wages on, a former pilot and a trainee are paired up to drive a seemingly obsolete special weapon in a desperate effort to save the world from the apocalypse.

Del Toro wanted to "honor" the Kaiju and Mecha genres while creating an original stand-alone film. The director made a point of starting from scratch. He cautioned his designers not to turn to films like Gamera (1965), Godzilla (1954), or The War of the Gargantuas (1966) for inspiration. Rather than popular culture, he drew inspiration from works of art such as Francisco Goya's The Colossus and George Bellows's boxing paintings. Forty Kaiju were designed, but only nine of these appear in the film. Del Toro avoided making the Kaiju too similar to any Earth creatures, instead opting to make them otherworldly and alien. Certain design elements are shared by all the Kaiju; this is intended to suggest that they are connected and were designed for a similar purpose. Each Kaiju was given a vaguely humanoid silhouette to echo the man-in-suit aesthetic of early Japanese Kaiju films.

Gipsy Danger, the American Jaeger, was based on the shape of New York City's Art Deco buildings, but infused with John Wayne's gunslinger gait and hip movements. Cherno Alpha, the Russian Jaeger, was based on the shape and paint patterns of a T-series Russian tank, combined with a giant containment silo to give the appearance of a walking nuclear power plant with a cooling tower on its head. Crimson Typhoon resembles a "medieval little warrior"; its texture evokes Chinese lacquered wood with golden edges. Striker Eureka is likened by del Toro to a Land Rover; the most elegant and masculine Jaeger, it has a jutting chest.

The movie stars Charlie Hunnam, Rinko Kikuchi, Idris Elba and Ron Perlman. Hunnam's performance was terrific. Hunnam did not glamorize nor did he bring the typical rock-star edge to the character. Like Hunnam, Kikuchi also brought emotional complexity and depth to female action character. Elba gave an incredible performance as a strong surrogate father figure to both Hunnam and Kikuchi. Finally, Perlman's performance was a wonderful performance, playing a character with such cool swagger that is very reminiscent to Han Solo from the original Star Wars trilogy (1977, 1980 and 1983) and Quint from Jaws (1975).

Pacific Rim is a really rather brilliant vomitorium of viscera, a monster movie with dreams of becoming a textbook for mad surgeons. Del Toro avidly lavishes his texture on the film, giving it a kiss of distinction. It's an elegant monster brawl of a picture with dread and yearning part of the sheer mass and scope. To conclude, It’s bizarre, loud, romantic and dynamic.

Simon says Pacific Rim receives:


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