Films: Pacific Rim (2013)

I almost managed to miss this during its UK cinema run due to extreme busyness and other stuff getting in the way. But it's a del Toro film and all I'd heard suggested that if I was going to see it, the big screen was the best way to do so. It turns out that there's one cinema in Birmingham still running it (the Empire down in Rubery) so we headed off, attimes_bracing in somewhat Dutiful Other Half mode. 

She loved it. 

I am very glad we did see Pacific Rim in the cinema; not only would the small screen have ill-served the impressive MECHA v MONSTER fight sequences, but it would have been sorely inadequate for the sheer quantity of ham served up to us. This is a film that doesn't just run gleefully with its clichés but turns them up to eleven in the process. It's gleeful and silly and overblown and just when you think it can't get any more silly and overblown RON PERLMAN turns up.

I have the following specific observations:

1. The origin of the Kaiju is sort-of explained, which is more than can be said for the origin of Idris Elba's accent.

2. Burn Gorman appears to have decided to portray his character as Alan Turing possessed by Doctor Strangelove.

3. I can suspend disbelief when it comes to giant fighting robots and monsters the size of office blocks engaging in smackdown wrestling. But when we see a slightly-built character walking up to a large helicopter as it lands holding an umbrella nearly as big as she is, I want to jump up and down ranting about how in real life she would have been blown about two hundred yards backwards. 



4. There is evidently a special extra-potent sort of Australian testosterone; good heavens, enough of it gets sprayed around.