Pacific Rim

Directed by Guillermo del Toro, Pacific Rim follows several humans as they battle enormous sea monsters using building-sized robots. It’s a seemingly foolproof setup that’s employed to consistently unwatchable effect by del Toro, with the filmmaker establishing an atmosphere of total incompetence right from the get-go – as Pacific Rim opens with a monster/robot fracas that’s devoid of anything resembling excitement or suspense. Del Toro’s decision to bathe each and every one of the movie’s brawls in rainy darkness proves disastrous, as such moments are consequently drained of their energy and rendered incoherent – which, when coupled with a severe overuse of computer-generated effects (ie everything just looks so fake), ensures that the film’s high-octane moments are uniformly useless and without merit. Equally troublesome is the movie’s complete lack of compelling human figures; scripters del Toro and Travis Beacham have suffused the proceedings with an assortment of walking clichés, including, among others, a reluctant hero, a tough-as-nails superior, and a pair of wacky scientists. It is, as such, not surprising to note that the various actors are simply unable to breathe any life into their one-dimensional characters, and there’s little doubt that the film’s tedious midsection, which is devoted primarily to an endless series of training and planning sequences, is unable to hold the viewer’s attention even fleetingly (ie it’s impossible to work up the slightest bit of interest in the protagonists’ hackneyed exploits). By the time the overlong and overblown finale rolls around, Pacific Rim has definitively established itself as a punishing ordeal that just might mark the nadir of the modern big-budget blockbuster – with the movie’s relentlessly dour atmosphere merely the tip of the iceberg in terms of its many, many problems (ie the film isn’t, despite an inherently ludicrous premise, fun).

1/2* out of ****