Josh Wilding Reviews: PACIFIC RIM; "Imagine The Worst Syfy Movie With Decent Special Effects"
Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim has divided critics and proved to be a major disappointment for Legendary and Warner Bros. this past weekend at the North American box office. Hit the jump for my spoiler-free verdict on arguably one of THE worst movies of 2013!
It's rare that a film is so bad that I want to walk out within the first half an hour. Having paid to see something, I always attempt to stick it out (it could get better after all, right?) and the only time I HAVE left was during a FREE screening of Iron Skies at the Kapow! Comic Convention in 2012. Well, for almost the entire gruelling two hours and eighteen minutes of Pacific Rim, every fibre of my being was telling me to get up and leave. It is without a doubt one of the worst movies I have ever had the misfortune of sitting through. Sure, if you're only after a soulless, brainless and utterly moronic movie with three decent - but really not all that special action sequences - you'll love it. However, while the Transformers films at least have the decency to embrace their sheer stupidity and have fun, this tries to be serious and fails on every level as a result.
Idris Elba needs a new agent. After being the only good thing about Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, he once again is the only decent part of a thoroughly awful ensemble cast. Like everyone else in Pacific Rim, he's saddled with dreadful dialogue from start to finish, but he's talented enough to actually elevate that material. The rest of the film is filled with those who can't act and those who are just plain awful at it. Charlie Hunnam, Robert Kazinsky and Rinko Kikuchi don't have an ounce of charisma between them, while Charlie Day and Ron Perlman are too bad for words. How exactly Guillermo del Toro managed to get such an awful performance out of the talented Burn Gorman is beyond me, but his turn is one of many that is one of those which is literally laughably bad.
Talking of del Toro, if Pacific Rim isn't proof enough that he's not cut out for a career directing Hollywood blockbusters, I'm not sure what is. There's no doubting the impressiveness of the action scenes with the gigantic Jaegers and Kaiju, but is any of it REALLY something we haven't seen before? There aren't any truly original ideas on display here. There's nothing memorable or a scene which will leave you gasping at the sheer scale of the battles on screen. They're undeniably exciting and in terms of special effects are great, but in an age of countless big CGI laden movies, Pacific Rim does nothing to stand out from the fold. It wouldn't even be fair to call it a brainless popcorn movie you can sit down and enjoy because you have to endure such tedious trash between the fights.
There's no real story to speak of. It's generic, cliched and boring. The score is pretty good, although that's probably the kindest thing you could say about the Pacific Rim. The humour constantly falls flat, and despite the aforementioned impressive action sequences, the noticeable green screen lets the movie down more than once. Practically, the sets are well designed, but we're now reaching a point where it's an absolute struggle to say anything even remotely positive about the movie. Simply put, it's garbage. It somehow has a reasonably good score on Rotten Tomatoes, but the mostly beloved Man of Steel has an extremely low one. Make of that what you will. Either way, one can only assume those critics and bloggers praising Pacific Rim as if it were the second coming of Christ were desperate to get a mention in a TV spot. Thank goodness it's so far performed badly at the box office, because at least that means we won't have to endure a second outing of this rubbish.
Imagine the worst Syfy movie ever with decent special effects and there you have Pacific Rim. Laughably bad, poorly written and directed, and entirely forgettable, it's yet another big budget disappointment. AVOID.
When legions of monstrous creatures, known as Kaiju, started rising from the sea, a war began that would take millions of lives and consume humanity’s resources for years on end. To combat the giant Kaiju, a special type of weapon was devised: massive robots, called Jaegers, which are controlled simultaneously by two pilots whose minds are locked in a neural bridge. But even the Jaegers are proving nearly defenseless in the face of the relentless Kaiju. On the verge of defeat, the forces defending mankind have no choice but to turn to two unlikely heroes—a washed up former pilot and an untested trainee — who are teamed to drive a legendary but seemingly obsolete Jaeger from the past. Together, they stand as mankind’s last hope against the mounting apocalypse.
STARRING:
Charlie Hunnam as Raleigh Antrobus
Rinko Kikuchi as Mako Mori
Idris Elba as General Stacker Pentecost
Charlie Day as Newt Gotlieb
Ron Perlman as Hannibal Chow
Clifton Collins Jr. as Tendo Choi
Max Martini as Herc Hansen
Robert Kazinsky as Yancy Antrobus
RELEASE DATE: Out Now!