Pacific Rim (2013)

  Intrepid boyfriend Rob spent last week trekking around London and Oxford.  He got back Wednesday night and was scheduled to work all weekend so I took Thursday off in order to spend some time with him.  Seeing Pacific Rim was at the top of his list of things to do.  It's nearing the end of its run in theaters but we managed to get in to the IMAX 3D showing.  The 3D didn't do it any special favors but the IMAX really showed off the scale of the robots.

In the near future, a dimensional rift at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean has started spitting forth gigantic beasts called Kaiju.  Humans have developed equally-large two-person-controlled robots called Jaegers to fight and kill them.  The two pilots must literally share the same brain function in order to control the massive bots, entering a combined consciousness called The Drift.  When Jaeger pilot Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) loses his brother Yancy (Diego Klattenhoff) during a fight, he is left a broken man.  His boss, Marshal Pentecost (Idris Elba), seeks him out for one final attempt to seal the rift, partnering him with fresh-faced newcomer Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi).  Their job is to hold off the Kaiju while the Australian Jaeger, piloted by father and son team, the Hansen's (Max Martini and Robert Kazinsky) drop a nuclear warhead into the rift.  However, things get a bit dicey when the resident Kaiju expert, Dr. Newt Geiszler (Charlie Day) manages to Drift with a Kaiju brain and uncovers some new information.

The movie borrows a bit from other action-heavy summer tentpoles like Independence Day and The Avengers.  If you're expecting a purely original story, this may affect your enjoyment.  If you just want to see giant monsters versus giant robots, it will probably not bother you so much.  There was only one part of the move that was utterly stupid, and that was the line about Gipsy Danger being "analog, purely nuclear" instead of digital.  That felt like someone drive a needle into my brain.  Otherwise, I'd say it was a decent-enough summer popcorn flick.  It could have used more Ron Perlman, but I think every movie could use more Ron Perlman.