"Fortune favours the brave, dude."
So, del Toro does Michael Bay with a hefty dose of his beloved Lovecraftian creatures in this pure popcorn movie that offers surprisingly little more than that. Although Pacific Rim is a rare original property in the Summer of 2013, its many influences are clear to be seen, not just from the whole kaiju/Godzilla cycle, but also from anime to Independence Day, and from Top Gun to Thunderbirds (the latter in the wonderfully insane pilot-boarding sequences and impossibly huge hangars). Indeed, the enormous scale of the visuals is amazingly impressive and the (IMAX) sound mix is thunderous. The smackdowns are impressive, but the breathless attempts to inject narrative suspense about the creatures' origins and intentions and the bluntly-handled emotional backstories have little weight. The simplistic characters are nevertheless watchable, and Charlie Hunnam and Idris Elba in particular give strong and engaging performances as the younger/older protagonists, but Rinko Kikuchi as the film's only real female presence barely gets a chance to register. Pacific Rim is ultimately about giant robots beating up giant monsters, and this respect the film truly delivers spectacle and big-screen entertainment, but do not go expecting much else.
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