Thursday, September 19, 2013

Pacific Rim (Two-Disc Special Edition DVD + UltraViolet)



A fantastic adventure with Del Toro's great polish throughout
Pacific Rim got hammered pretty hard by a lot of confused critics who apparently only know Guillermo del Toro from his more artistic magical realism work and somehow missed Hellboy, Mimic, and Blade 2. Pacific Rim belongs solidly to the latter camp, but it's a labor of love and is missing none of the flair that makes del Toro films so special. At its core it is essentially a Western Super Sentai film; heroes suit up in giant robots to battle monsters that are invading our dimension... And that's it. You can foist all sorts of allegory onto this movie if you want, and you can plumb it for deeper meaning- it's rich enough- but at the end of the day it's a thrilling adventure about friendship, big robots, and monster punching. Wet blankets need not apply.

Short summary: a portal to an alien world opens under the ocean and giant monsters come out. The governments of the world team up to battle them, eventually doing so with Jaegers, huge robots piloted by two psychically linked...

Non-spoiler - Big Robots vs. Big Monsters = BIG FUN!
If you ever watched a Godzilla movie, or any other giant monster movie, and wanted to see what it might look like with today's special effects, grab your popcorn and check out Guillermo del Toro's "Pacific Rim."

In the near future, Earth faces invasion from giant monsters (Kaiju), who emerge from the ocean and wreak havoc on coastal cities. The humans create giant robot Jaegers to fight them. For a while this works, but the monsters grow stronger and once again overwhelm the humans. Pacific Rim follows a former robot jockey who is called back to duty as the human defenses dwindle.....

I've looked forward to this movie for a long time, as I loved the giant monster movies of my youth. This didn't disappoint. Interesting and intimidating Kaiju, unique and powerful Jaegers, well choreographed fight scenes, and awesome special effects combine to make this a fantastic summer movie. There were several scenes which had the audience cheering and applauding...

What Bayformers could have been
I'll say up front, though it bears little resemblance to the monster sized dump that is Michael Bay's "Transformers" trilogy-Pacific Rim is the type of movie Bayformers should have been. What I mean by that-is that unlike those hell spawned abominations-Pacific Rim delivers giant robots that awe and inspire instead of ones that pee on people and dangle metallic testicles. Also unlike Bayformers you will not be forced to witness any dog humping or have to groan through lame "jokes" about red mugs in yellow rooms. (No 45 minute long who-gives-a-crap job interview scenes in here either)

Thankfully-Pacific Rim does not take an uber-cool property and twist it, turn it and crush it beyond recognition into some overly long, lame one-note joke of a film. Instead, it's completely earnest and non cynical in its delivery. I've been a fan of Guillermo Del Toro since Pan's Labyrinth (a BRILLIANT adult fairy tale) and have gone back and watched his other films to discover what a...

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