Pacific Rim

 Finally!  A Summer movie that motivated me to get on my butt and blog!  In a Summer when the apocalypse is commonplace (off the top of my head, we're talking about Oblivion, After Earth, World War Z, and This is the End, although I am sure there are others) I have to admit that I was still unnaturally excited for Pacific Rim, which promised little aside from destruction --- destruction provided by giant robots fighting giant monsters, which brings with it awesomeness at almost a cellular level.  That was not the only reason I was excited, though.  This was another chance for director Guillermo del Toro to show once again why he is one of the greatest visual directors making movies today.  And then I saw the trailer and started asking questions.

Did Idris Elba just give Bill Pullman's speech from Independence Day?  Do we have to watch two people in spacesuits perform a synchronized dance instead of watching robots punching monsters in the junk?  Is Charlie Hunnam going to be a muscular version of Sam Witwicky from the Transformers trilogy?  If you need to know, basically, not really, and blessedly no, respectively.

Also, I can't be the only one who recognizes the old Fox Sunday football robots, right?

Pacific Rim opens with a voice-over from Raleigh (Charlie Hunnam) bringing the audience up to speed.  In the near future, a dimensional rift opens in the Pacific Ocean and huge alien monsters come through.  These monsters are reminiscent of Japanese monsters movies, like Godzilla and Gamera, so they are called Kaiju, after that film subclass.

As you might expect, the Kaiju did some major damage, so the World Governments decided to team up and create the Jaeger program.  Jaegers are gigantic fighting robots that are piloted by two humans, who share some sort of Vulcan mind meld in order to pilot their metal beast.  For a while, the Jaegers worked.  Category 1 and 2 Kaiju --- that's a rating system based on their size --- were easy pickings for these awesome anime mechs/rock 'em sock 'em robots.

If a punch to the face is badass, how much more amazing is a ROBOT punch to a MONSTER face?

In fact, our narrator, Raleigh was a Jaeger pilot with his brother.  Unfortunately, they happened to be the first Jaeger to meet with a Category 3 Kaiju, and the brother was killed in action.  Years have passed and the Jaeger program is on hard times.  Their funding has been cut in favor of building large walls around major cities.

...which works out well

It is at this point that the Jaeger commander (Idris Elba) re-recruits Raleigh to join up with the much-depleted Jaeger corps.  Thanks to his crack science team (composed of Charlie Day and Burn Gorman), he thinks there is a slim chance of being able to close the dimensional portal in a crazy, suicidal offensive maneuver.  He needs Raleigh because he only has four Jaegers left, and Raleigh is the only living person who has ever piloted one of the models.  But who will be his soul-mate co-pilot?

To find out, they endure several Dance Dance Revolution trials --- in spaaaace!

I always take the time to discuss the acting in the movies I review, but is that really necessary with Pacific Rim?  It's really not, but I found the acting to be a pleasant surprise in a film that could have gotten away with a lot less in that area.  Admittedly, Charlie Hunnam didn't "wow" in this role, thanks to a combination of dull dialogue and serving as a plot device.  He wasn't bad, but he sure was bland.  Idris Elba, on the other hand, did some of his best movie work to date (his television work is still far better, though); his character was kind of a mish-mash of other end-of-the-world authority figures, but Elba was still able to make the part a little interesting.  Rinko Kikuchi was okay as Raleigh's partner; it can be tough making an introvert interesting in an action flick, but she was all right.  I was pleasantly surprised by Charlie Day, if only because this is the furthest he has gone from his role on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

SCIENCE!

He was charming and fun, and I would love to see him stretch his acting chops more in the future.  Burn Gorman wasn't as big of a surprise, but his portrayal of a scientist brought to mind Peter Lorre for reasons I cannot articulate, and that's probably not a bad thing.  Ron Perlman, unsurprisingly, had a small part in Pacific Rim, since he and del Toro are such good buddies.  Perlman's work here reminds us that he's not that good of an actor, just a good sport, willing to put on any makeup necessary to look cool.

Above: Perlman and two other actors.  Get it?  He's ugly.

Rounding out the cast, Clifton Collins Jr. and Max Martini were perfectly acceptable in small, decently likable parts.  Robert Kazinsky was obnoxious as the Jaeger equivalent of Iceman from Top Gun.  That may be the point of his character, but Val Kilmer sure was cooler.

How do they expect to play beach volleyball and high-five wearing that?

Most of the time, when I discuss movie direction, I focus on the camera work and the actor performances.  For Pacific Rim, though, so much of the movie was CGI that I am taking a different approach.  I really enjoy the work of director/co- writer Guillermo del Toro, if only from a visual standpoint, but I like what he did with the humans in this film. 

He scared them.

They could have easily been an afterthought, or worse --- an irritant, like those awful Witwickys.  Instead, del Toro introduced a reasonable amount of drama and character beats to a story that is essentially "punch monster in the face" for 85 pages.

Don't forget the four pages of "science-y doodads"

I was actually impressed that the story wasn't as predictable as I had assumed it would be; there was no unnecessary love story and the obvious choice for a sacrificial character was ignored.  Visually, this film was stunning.  The amount of detail that went into the set, robot, and monster designs was astounding.

Del Toro clearly put a lot of his efforts into the look and feel of this film, and it showed.  This felt like a plausible world, where giant robots had been fighting and breaking and being repaired for over a decade.  The script isn't very clever and del Toro still has not managed to really nail interpersonal scenes, but his work with broad visual concepts is impressive and exciting.

"Robots and monsters fighting in space" exciting?  Yes.  A thousand times, yes.

What is it about Pacific Rim that excited me, where others failed?  There have been so many movies lately that have shown vast urban environments being absolutely wrecked --- what makes this any different than, say, Man of Steel?  I think the biggest difference is in scale.  Because the robots and monsters are so gigantic, the camera is pulled far enough away for audiences to really notice and appreciate everything being smashed to bits.  That scale also seems to imply and accept large numbers of civilian casualties in a way that is expected and not ignored.  It isn't just that, though; several battles take place in the ocean and are still a blast to watch. 

I didn't get "action fatigue" watching Pacific Rim because it was fun and each battle did something else spectacular and over-the-top.  There was also enough wanton destruction to spread it fairly evenly over the entire film.  This isn't a back-loaded action movie where the cool stuff is all at the end --- some of the coolest scenes come during the opening voice-over.  If I am going to be perfectly honest, Pacific Rim scratches an itch I have had since childhood.  I played with Transformers and Voltron and build huge Lego things for them to smash.  While I have seen a lot (almost too much) CGI destruction of late, this is a film that captures the fun of playing with toys that are clearly scaled differently than everything else in your toy box.  Is Pacific Rim derivative?  Well, yes.  At its core, this is a classic kaiju movie done right, combined with combat mechs that animes seem to love so much and a large enough budget to make everything look good.  This movie owes a lot to many sources, but this is clearly a movie that loves what it is imitating, and even improves on its influences.  In a Summer of sequels, reboots, and outright flops, Pacific Rim stands out for being something I will be able to watch over and over, regardless of sobriety.

The Oxford Murders

Have you ever seen a movie that was clearly ripping off a more successful film?  I'm not talking about pornographic adaptations, like Flesh Gordon, Pulp Friction, or San Fernando Jones and the Temple of Poon.  No, I'm talking about movies that have tag lines like "If you liked Snakes on a Plane, you'll love Snakes on a Train!"  Well, The Oxford Murders isn't quite that bad, but it is clearly emulating a formula most Americans would recognize.

Martin (Elijah Wood) is an aspiring American mathematician that has just arrived at Oxford to work on his thesis.  He wants, more than anything, to have his idol, Arthur Seldom (John Hurt), as his thesis advisor; these days, though, Seldom is heard an encouraging word toward students.  Martin attends one of Seldom's lectures, where he hears Seldom declare that you cannot prove the truth of anything, outside the laws of mathematics, which means that philosophy (the search for truth) is dead, and life has no meaning.  Not surprisingly, there aren't usually questions for Seldom after he is done speaking, since he basically mocks their quest for knowledge in his lecture.  Martin, though, is brave enough to stick up for mathematics as a form of absolute truth, which gets him absolutely eviscerated by Seldom in the lecture hall.  Figuratively, of course.  It does get his attention, though.  Later, the two meet up again by chance, only to discover a murder.  The victim, Martin's landlady (Anna Massey) and an old friend of Seldom's, had been on the brink of death for years.  If it were not for a small bloody nose, there would have been no signs of foul play; well, except for the note that Seldom was handed while signing books after his lecture.  The note read "First of the series" and had a hand-drawn circle beneath.  Out of context, that note meant nothing, but the note and that bloody nose indicate that someone is committing a series of murders.  Worse, Seldom realizes that the murderer wants to impress him.  Can Martin and Seldom work together to figure out the killer's pattern, or will they forever be one step behind?

I mentioned a formula earlier, but I didn't point it out in the plot.  That's because it's more of a plot device than an actual plot development.  So, here's how the formula goes.  Seldom casually mentions an advanced mathematical concept, like Godel's incompleteness theorems, in front of Martin and a normal (non-mathematician) person.  The normal person asks what that is, and Martin explains it, with Seldom agreeing.  In his explanation, Martin might throw out another concept that the normal person has to ask about, like the vesica piscis, and Seldom jumps in to explain.  Basically, the normal person is the point of view character for the audience in these scenes, and one expert throws out technical concepts with sometimes questionable conclusions, but those conclusions are never questioned because the other expert backs the first one up.  Does that sound familiar?  It should.  Yes, this movie is based on a novel.  No, the novel is not by Dan Brown.  Man, I hate the two experts vs. the uneducated formula!  Unfortunately, The DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons have made the formula so successful that imitations are inevitable.  And, as much as I detest The DaVinci Code (book and movie), this movie is nowhere near as good.

The problem is not the acting.  John Hurt playing a clever and educated British man is not a stretch.  Elijah Wood, aside from his naturally peculiar speech cadence, was also fine.  He plays intelligent characters far better than dimwits, but I think he's been plateauing for a while with his emoting.  Leonor Watling plays a love interest for both men and she does a pretty good job.  It's not a major part, but she definitely made the most of it.  I'm not certain why a murder mystery would require her to get naked, but I think complaining would seem rude.  I was less impressed with the rest of the cast.  Jim Carter is adequate as the policeman investigating the murders.  Anna Massey and Julie Cox play an antagonistic mother-daughter pair, but their scenes are awkward and unnatural; I blame Cox more than Massey, because the awkwardness continues after Massey's character dies.  Dominique Pinon's character was pretty unbelievable, so his performance can be excused somewhat, I suppose.  Burn Gorman, though, plays a frustrated mathematician like his character was the Hunchback of Notre Dame.  His character is also unbelievable, but Gorman overacted well beyond the point of so-bad-it's-good.  There was something weird with his upper lip, too --- it didn't move much, which gave the impression (that I have been unable to prove) that his lines were dubbed over.  Whatever the reason, he was awful.  And, for some reason, Alex Cox (director of Repo Man and Sid and Nancy) has a bit part as a one-limbed insane mathematician.  I hope he doesn't get typecast.

I may not have been a huge fan of the acting and I may hate the two experts formula, but the deciding factor here is the story itself.  The first story problem can be seen with the basic structure.  Martin is the main character, right?  Something should, theoretically, be at stake for either him or his loved ones, which would indicate his love interest.  While it is mentioned that both are suspects in the murders (or at least some of them), there is never any sign that the police are especially interested in them.  So, there isn't a huge sense of urgency.  With Martin as the main character, though, the main character knows more about this film's concepts than the average person; Seldom is the expert, though.  That means that the main character is neither the expert nor the point of view character.  Making Martin the lead character distances the audience from the immediacy of the issue as well as the expert knowledge needed to solve the problem.

Oh, and the rest of the film is dumb, too.  That's a tough problem to overcome.  Why is there a romantic interest in this film at all?  Practically no time is given for it to develop; all it does is provide Martin with a reason to give up his academic aspirations and give bored viewers a pretty Spanish woman to ogle.  About those aspirations...Martin claims that he wants to quit academia forever, once the murder case is closed, and move somewhere with his ladyfriend.  There is no way in hell a budding mathematician that has been working hand in hand with his math idol is going to give that up; that would be like Tim "Ripper" Owens meeting Judas Priest, practicing with them, and then turning them down for a permanent gig.  Not going to happen, folks.  What makes this even worse is that, at the end of the movie, Martin is left seemingly without either love or academics.  Awesome.  The manner in which the plot is resolved also leaves something to be desired.  I don't want to spoil the "twist" that you will never see coming, or maybe never care about, but I will let you know that a busload of mentally handicapped children die to help reach the film's conclusion.  Not just any film can boast that claim, it takes a "special" one, like The Oxford Murders.

It's a shame, really, that this movie isn't very good.  Director Alex de la Iglesia did a pretty good job telling the story, and clues to the ending are shown, even if you're meant to overlook them.  It just happens that this movie has a stupid story that is made worse by its pretentiousness.  The best acting in the world can, at best, make a terrible movie worth watching once.  Unfortunately, the acting and directing in this is only good, which means you shouldn't waste your time with this movie.