Pacific Rim

Del Toro brings us something that has been done before. After all, big cities have already been devastated by The Avengers, Transformers, or Superman to the point that falling skyscrapers are becoming a bit of a stereotype. The director tries to add personality to it by providing some pretty clear action scenes, and by not going too far over the edge in terms of visual sweeps. On the other hand, into two hours he didn't cram in a single major character, a real character who could pull carry better than a jaeger pulling a tin can down the street. Idris Elba has charisma but drowns in pathetic speeches, and the rest of the ensemble is severely uninteresting - Ron Perlman is more of an iconic trademark than a functional character. It goes by quickly, but the most important and impressive scene is still the escape of little Mako from the kaiju through the empty street. (18/07/2013)

A new movie about an invasion by toerags from another dimension which, instead of NGE (the blues know what I’m talking about), is more similar to Emmerich’s version of Godzilla, eighties style. Guillermo has a lot of strong sides and one (and for the purposes of a summer popcorn movie - fundamental) weakness: he is simply no good at action. Under his directing action turns into a succession of clichés and wonderfully arranged images with no dynamism, inner tension, build up or clarity. No wonder that the most successful movies of his career are those with no action. Despite this handicap, he decided to make a movie based purely on action in massive dimensions. And... And certainly this didn’t turn out to be that proverbial exception that proves the rule, but simply solid Bayism with nice visuals, which might just break the iceberg of racist xenophobia so common in this country. After watching this, every little boy will want to have a little Gypsy Woman figurine on his bedside table. (10/07/2013)

Godzilla meets Transformers. Pacific Rim is the most honest of this summer’s blockbusters, as it doesn’t pretend to be anything it isn’t and avoids narrative feints and overlapping meanings in straightforwardly bringing very clear content to the term “high concept” (Monsters! Robots! And they’re really big!). (With respect to the anticipated hurricane of merchandising, the fetishisation of technology present in the film deserves special analysis – the characters repeatedly marvel at the power and size of the robots as the camera revels in their design in long shots, which are in some ways reminiscent of the presentation of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park). The plot puts us in familiar positions as viewers, as it is composed of popular sci-fi and military motifs (Earth in peril, neural linking, clones, male rivalry, the best defence is offence). All it requires from us is that we somewhat unthinkingly and completely contentedly watch modified versions of Top Gun, Cloverfield, Independence Day and Hellboy (for connoisseurs, there is a bonus in the form of the Blade Runner-esque neo-noir visual aspect of Hong Kong and a rather inappropriate reference to the famous “nose” scene from Chinatown). Given that its marketing campaign made it very clear what it was going to be about (and that it wouldn’t be about much more than that), Pacific Rim’s lack of originality did pose an obstacle to my enjoyment of the pure entertainment that it provided. The predictability of the plot twists and the restricting of the human element (manifested in the hunky actors who, with the exception of Elba, are interchangeable and uncharismatic) to the necessary minimum – after all, the concept of the Jaeger is based on the “transformation” of humans into a multi-ton steel monster (or an analogy for the cooperative playing of action-oriented games) – make room for a visual and visceral action experience. The heavyweight matches are clear and varied to the extent possible, but they are mainly huge. It’s a dream come true for gamers and comic-book fans. Guillermo del Toro plays like a little boy on a grand scale. I enjoyed the film – not intellectually, but intensely – especially because of its imaginativeness and the sensory experience provided by the combination of the film’s incredible visual aspect and its rock soundtrack. 75% (12/07/2013)

Guillermo del Toro was a bit of a wildcard in the top Hollywood league, because it was automatically assumed that once he made a real feature film (the underfunded Hellboy and demented Blade can't be included here), it would be quite the event. In retrospect, I'm really sorry that the R megalomania in the At the Mountains of Madness exploded and The Hobbit was overripe. Because Pacific Rim is basically everything that connects me to the term generic Bay blockbuster. A few initial great ideas and a really gigantic atmosphere were taken away by the speech of a crazy hipster scientist, in which he sucked all the clichés about the alien invasion into one sentence and things got no better thereafter. The fact that basically a third of the film is devoted only to the relationships between the characters makes Pacific Rim feel empty and undeveloped, even the miniaturist del Toro, who managed to make a sympathetic character from a walking ectoplasm, sinks to awkward creations and casting overacting (the younger and less talented brother of Heath Ledger really doesn't pull it off). Were it not for Ron Perlman, I would dare say that there is not a single really eccentric character in the film, rather only a collection of replaying clichés. I was quite surprised by the clumsy work with the storylines - in order for one to continue, the other stops and after five minutes continues from the same place it ended. Sometimes this leads to obscure awkward transitions, such as SPOILER "characters who learn valuable info have to run to the control room to shout into the microphone and warn the Jägers, who are meanwhile marching for three minutes on the seabed" / SPOILER. At the time of Star Trek's frantic intertwining of events, this is truly dense retro. You will get to know Guillermo mainly from the perfectionist visual, which gives the impression that Gaspar Noé started playing with robots and monsters. There is really very little to catch on to the neon beauty full of reflections, and some scenes are giddily iconic and it is a pleasure to look at them (even in 3D, which is not dark and is not at all bothersome). So what arose from del Toro's long transition to blockbusters? Visually and design-wise retro, which is not much better or wittier than Transformers (although from my point of view, it surpasses Transformers in terms of implementation skills). Hit me in the head with a tanker, but that is not going to be enough. (10/07/2013)

Something is creaking here and unfortunately not in that good robotic way. Guillermo del Toro might be playing around with huge action figures, but he forgot to give them a beating heart. Any part of Transformers can have as many mistakes as it wants, and yet it works incomparably better in terms of storytelling or emotion. Surprisingly, various dialogue and narrative clichés pile up here for some time, not all the actors are likable (Charlie Day fails miserably in his role), and all the weight lies on the action scenes. As expected, these work perfectly, and the battle for Hong Kong with the third dimension in the background is intoxicating like nothing I've seen in a long while, but it is still far from enough. Behind every precise hit, there is hesitation, and behind every twist, there is awareness that this is only little boy's dream come true without anything that would also satisfy someone who didn't spend his childhood throwing robots and lizards against the wall in his room. Even the plot twists with some added value, like the black market or the hints of a social crisis, feel slightly contrived. And given that the characters fighting the enemy are just pre-set genre figurines (unfortunately, even the eagerly awaited protagonists Mako and Pentecost), it is quite a disappointing experience despite cautious expectations. The third star is saved by the likable Charlie Hunnam and an appearance by a rejuvenated Daniel Craig, as well as Ron Perlman in the role of Ron Perlman. It particularly pains me, as a person who regularly acknowledges both Hellboy and Hellboy II as possibly the best comic book adaptations, that this blockbuster certainty didn't work out in the end. The perfect visual attraction remained just that: an attraction, not an honest film. (11/07/2013)