PCP in Theaters - Pacific Rim

Back at the start of the summer, I had highlighted Pacific Rim on my summer movie preview as one I really wanted to see in theaters. I got that chance last week. Despite mixed reviews and a disappointing opening weekend box office, I did not come away disappointed with the film itself.

Today we are facing the monsters at our door. Today we are cancelling the apocalypse! - Stacker Pentecost.

Pacific Rim - 2013, rated PG-13.  My rating: 8 out of 10.

Pacific Rim is an alien invasion story set not too far into the future. A rift between our dimension and another dimension has opened at the bottom of the ocean. A giant monster, called a Kaiju, has come through that rift, and lays waste to San Francisco. It takes our conventional military six days to take down the monster. Then more monsters come through the portal, laying waste to other cities along the Pacific Ocean. So the governments of the world build giant robots, called Jaegers, to fight the continuing appearances of the Kaiju.

The war between the forces of humanity and the endless onslaught of Kaiju has been going on for years when the film starts, and the war is not going too well for us. The last few Jaegers, under the command of Stacker Pentecost, have a plan to stop the Kaiju once and for all. If they're not already too late...

Continue with the review after the jump -->

I don't want to say too much more on the plot so as not to spoil some of the deaths and such that take place in any war or alien invasion film. Instead, I am going to focus on my impressions of the film itself.

Was it cliched? Yes. Was it predictable? Yes. Do I care? Not in the least. The film promised giant robots and giant monsters beating the tar out of each other, and on that regard the film delivered. The enormous Kaiju and Jaegers are very well detailed and each one is unique enough that it can be told apart from each other. Their scale is boggling, one of them could step on Optimus Prime and turn him into dust no problem. They also do a decent job of respecting physics in terms of the Jaegers' capabilities for speed and performance. A machine that large would not exactly be Speedy Gonzales out there, so it is nice that they remembered this when engineering the film.

Despite a lack of big name stars, the actors did a decent job with the material, and besides, no one is seeing this movie for who's starring in it anyways. They also aren't seeing it for the cliched dialogue either. Shakespeare this ain't. Two performances were epic though: Ron Perlman & Charlie Day easily steal every scene that they are in.

Bottom line: Pacific Rim promised giant action, and it delivered. I hope it does well enough internationally to warrant making a sequel, I'd love to see more Jaeger on Kaiju action in the future!