Pacific Rim

Pacific Rim - Dir. Guillermo Del Toro (2013)

"Today, we face the monsters that are at our door. Today, we are cancelling the apocalypse!"

Robots vs. monsters, is there anything else you need to know? For those of you who grew up watching Voltron and Robotech, Pacific Rim is the movie you imagined in a fever dream while playing with your action figures.

In the near future, a dimensional rift has opened up at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean allowing enormous creatures known as 'kaiju' to invade our world. To fight these monsters, humanity banded together and built massive robotic suits they called 'jaegers.' The jaegers are so enormous that they must be piloted by two individuals connected to a neural bridge referred to as 'the drift.' Jaeger pilots are treated like rock stars and two of the best are Yancy (Diego Klattenhoff) and Raleigh Beckett (Charlie Hunnam). A disastrous battle between their Jaeger, Gipsy Danger, and a kaiju near the Arctic Circle costs Yancy his life and leaves Raleigh a broken man.

Five years later, the United Nations attempts to shut down the jaeger program in favor of building giant walls around their coastal cities. When that plan fails miserably, jaeger commander Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) recruits a reluctant Raleigh back into the suit and pairs him up with Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), who lost her parents as a young girl to a kaiju rampage.

It's clear from the get-go that director Guillermo Del Toro has been dying to cut loose after spending years on projects (The Hobbit, At the Mountains of Madness) that never came to fruition. With Pacific Rim, Del Toro merges his unique vision with his love of anime (Neon Genesis Evangelion is an obvious influence) and Toho monster flicks to create one of the best summer blockbusters in recent years. His direction isn't without flaws. The visuals are muddled by setting most of the action at night and underwater. The climax is particularly troubling because the final kaijus look extremely similar and they aren't any more menacing than the ones seen before. However, when Del Toro turns it on, he goes for broke. The best sequence in Pacific Rim is the near-20 minute battle set against the neon glow of a Blade Runner-esque Hong Kong. Another triumph for Del Toro is the enthralling and heartbreaking flashback in which a terrified Mako is left alone in a decimated Tokyo as a kaiju roars overhead. Pacific Rim shines in IMAX 3D. No, the 3D doesn't improve anything, but the screen size and enhanced surround sound are perfect for the metallic mayhem.

The screenplay by Del Toro and Travis Beacham never drops itself to the willfully lowbrow levels of Michael Bay's Transformers franchise. Pacific Rim might paint its characters in the broadest strokes possible, but there's nary a homophobic or misogynistic bone in its body. What Del Toro and Beacham have done best is the world building that only hints at the rich history behind it. Take for example the character of Hannibal Chau (played eccentrically by Ron Perlman), a black market dealer in kaiju organs. Apparently, bone powder from an extra-dimensional beast is a cure for erectile dysfunction. Chau's headquarters in Hong Kong appear to have been built around a fallen kaiju's skeleton.

Charlie Hunnam doesn't exactly light up the screen in the lead role, but he does a fair job and gets assistance from a game supporting cast. He has some good scenes with Rinko Kikuchi while Del Toro and Beacham never allow the two to fall into the clichéd romance. Idris Elba plays the hardass drill sergeant we've seen countless times before, but he does it pretty damn well. His St. Crispin's speech will undoubtedly be heavily quoted. Stealing the show are Charlie Day and Burn Gorman as a pair of diametrically opposed kaiju scientists. Day is brash and high-strung while Gorman looks and acts like a latter-day Jeffrey Combs.

Pacific Rim is Saturday morning cartoon brought to life. A pure fanboy fantasy that blasts the rest of the summer slate right in the face with a robot rocket punch.

Rating: *** (*****)

Frankie Go Boom

Frankie Go Boom - Dir. Jordan Roberts (2012)

Poor Frank Bartlett (Charlie Hunnam) has been tormented all his life by his older brother Bruce (Chris O'Dowd), who sees himself as a director on the rise. The straw that broke the camel's back took place during Frank's marriage in which his fiancée admitted to being unfaithful and Frank responded by vomiting on her. As if that wasn't humiliating enough, Bruce videotaped the whole affair and uploaded it to YouTube turning Frank into a viral sensation.

Now, Frank lives alone in Death Valley, but gets drawn back when his mom (Nora Dunn) guilt trips him into returning when Bruce successfully finishes rehab. Almost immediately, Frank literally bumps into Lassie (Lizzy Caplan), who has tied one on after catching her boyfriend in flagrante delicto with their pool boy. Their night together gets off to a rocky start when Frank has problems getting it up. Of course, Bruce is there to record the whole thing and marketing it as his latest cinematic masterpiece. Frank is livid and the situation worsens when the brothers learn Lassie is the daughter of Bruce's rehab buddy, Jack (Chris Noth), a washed-up actor known for his violent temper. Frank and Bruce bounce around Los Angeles in their bumbling attempts to destroy the footage.

Frankie Go Boom portrays the exasperating life of a sane man in an insane world populated by completely unsympathetic characters. Yet, Frank is such a pushover that it's hard to root for him. Nearly everyone around him deserves a punch in the face from his irritating brother to his obnoxious mother, both of whom share a creepy and borderline incestuous relationship. Also, the film never explains why Frank still brings his cell phone to the desert if he wants to isolate himself from his poisonous family.

If there is any heart to be found in the movie, it is from the blossoming romance between Frank and Lassie. Their relationship begins with a twist on the meet cute when a drunken Lassie crashes into Frank while wearing a coat over her edible lingerie. But, their love story is sidelined by writer/director Jordan Roberts' preoccupation with crafting outrageous situations. Chris Noth runs on his treadmill in a thong and asks the Bartlett boys to smack his ass and Frank gives CPR to a pig after it's launched into a grimy swimming pool. The results of this shock and awe approach to comedy leads to a series of tortuously strained gags and a collection of supporting characters that are nothing more than caricatures. The only interesting one of the bunch is Ron Perlman as a transsexual ex-con now known as Phyllis. That is more due to Perlman's performance than anything written on the page.

Just like Perlman, Lizzy Caplan and Chris O'Dowd are talented performers that are simply wasted in their one-note roles. Meanwhile, Charlie Hunnam doesn't make much of an impression in the lead. Perhaps, comedy isn't his strong suit.

Frankie Go Boom is a terribly unfunny farce. At best, it's a mild curiosity for Sons of Anarchy fans hoping to see Hunnam and Perlman in wildly different roles.

Rating: * (*****)