PG-13, 131 minutes
Commentary by Christopher Lloyd
“Pacific Rim” tied the knot on a substandard summer of movies. It had something old, something new, plenty of stuff borrowed and something totally badass.
Some have dismissed co-writer/director Guillermo del Toro’s film as a mere mash-up of old Japanese science fiction, mecha and kaiju. There is some truth to that. He basically paired the big monster of Godzilla with the mammoth robots of 1960s TV shows and said, “Hey, what would happen if they fought?”
The premise is that Earth is under siege by skyscraper-tall creatures that emerge periodically from a portal at the bottom of the ocean. At first they laid waste to large swaths of the planet, but eventually humanity banded together to create the jaegers – hulking metal automatons controlled by two humans whose minds are linked through something called “the Drift.”
Things haven’t been going so well for humanity lately, with the jaeger program nearly shut down while the monsters are bigger and badder than ever. A washed-up pilot (Charlie Hunnam) gets recruited by his old boss (a commanding Idris Elba) to make one last stand.
“Pacific Rim” is a terrifically entertaining movie, easily the best this summer had to offer.
Movie: A-
