Pacific Rim

On the one hand, Pacfic Rim is a film in which giant mechs battle equally massive kaiju emerging from a rift under the ocean, and it would take a lot of hard work for anyone to screw up a mech vs kaiju film so badly that I couldn't find anything to like in it. On the other hand, I saw Transformers II, so I know that some directors can beat those sorts of odds. On the gripping hand, Guillermo Del Toro is a much better filmmaker than Michael Bay.

As always, the spoiler free review first:

Pacific Rim is an against-all-odds, last stand battle kind of movie, in which a scarred veteran and his gifted rookie partner join the thin red line, led by a commander who has forgotten everything but the war and needs to remember to be human and an arrogant ace whose skill almost makes up for his lack of humility. In giant robots. The story and the characters are nothing especially new, which means that the movie sinks or swims on the execution of those ideas.

And the giant robots.

The good news is that in the hands of Del Toro, these old ideas are played fresh and a solid cast manage to make you believe the screamingly unfeasible bullshit by never letting you think that they don't believe it 100%. The beats are obvious, but because each one is a classic, and the band of misfits are genuinely loveable misfits, so it's easy to forgive them for being a little familiar. And the monsters and the giant robots are freaking awesome.

With spoilers:
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The film's weakest point by a long way is the opening info-dump, which is an awful lot like the trailer voice over. I felt that much of it could have been conveyed through dialogue and, in particular, through the drift, an in-universe means of exploring the memories of the characters. With that out of the way, however, the film slams into high gear and barely lets up the pace for the next two hours.

Our opening action scene introduces brothers Raleigh and Yancy Beckett, and our real star, the MkIII Jaeger Gypsy Danger. The jaegers have a real scale and weight on the screen; they look and feel massive and powerful, matching the voice over's claim that in a jaeger 'you can fight a hurricane'. When they hit, or get hit, the impact is palpable, although by recent standards the volume is not overwhelming.

The female lead is always a rocky point in action movies, but Mako Mori manages to combine an affecting humility and vulnerability with force and determination, and without needing a rescue at the end of the film. Yes, Raleigh gives her his oxygen and ejects her from the jaeger, but the damage is done to both of them and she later rescues him from his pod. I also like the fact that, despite some tension throughout the film, we close on a headbutt of love instead of a kiss.

So, yeah, I liked it.