Pacific Rim (2013)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2013
	Director: Guillermo Del Toro (Mimic, Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy 1-2)
	Actors: Charlie Hunnam (Sons of Anarchy TV-series), Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Ron Perlman (Hellboy 1-2)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action, SF
	Conditions of visioning: 23.07.2013, CINEMA theater, 3D
Synopsis: A portal through dimensions opened at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and is releasing giant monsters (=Kaiju) at an increasing frequency. Humanity built giant robots (=Jaeger) to fight them, with the help of gifted pilots like Raleigh Becket (Hunnam).
Review: I have been expecting this movie since I saw the first trailer last year and commented about it in an article. I like Del Toro's previous work although I find he has difficulties mixing the action and the poesy he would like to insert in his Hollywood movies. One thing is clear: the fights between robots and monsters that occupy half of the movie are awesome. I couldn't help exclaiming my enthousiam when a three-armed Jaeger fights an acid-spitting Kaiju the size of a skycraper, and ten other times! I heard criticism that most of those scenes take place at night under the rain, but it didn't disturb me too much as they are well choregraphed and fluid. As big fan of the genre, it looks like Del Toro took all the best from the Japanese Kaiju Eiga movies to create the best live version to date. The most noticeable recent attemps were the 2000 American Godzilla (without robots) and the 2004 Japanese Godzilla: Final Wars which had everything, was a lot of fun but which quality is not match with Pacific Rim. I am pretty sure that following the sucess of this movie, Del Toro will get the green light to adapt Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness, and that more Kaiju Eiga will be produced by Hollywood. Now besides the successful rendering of the fights, the weak part of the movie is the story and the dialogs. It is all (too) classical at the beginning (the rebel genius pilot who lost family, comes back to save the world...) but it looks like after half of the movie, Del Toro gave up trying to insert poetry, and just used the worst clichés to fill in the blanks between the battles. The main characters are all charicatural and don't match with the sense of reality that the movie tries to give. Quite a performance: in this movie the giants monsters feel real but the human don't! I was looking forward to see Charlie Hunnam playing, as I knew him only from the Sons of Anarchy TV-series. He is not playing a military type but a sort of rebel, so he didn't have to change his act much and I can't tell that he is a good actor yet. Ron Perlman is true to himself and is clearly a reference character. So the movie deserves 10/10 for the Kaiju fights, but only 5/10 for the dialogs/actors. I pushed the average up to 8/10 but I can't seriously put more, unfortunately.
Rating: 8 /10