Pacific Rim (2013)

Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable.

I know I've spoken at great, most likely annoying lengths throughout the course of this blog about my dislike of Michael Bay. I could probably start a glue factory what with all the horse corpses I have laying around to pummel as a result of it. I give him credit where credit is due, as my shockingly glowing review of "Pain & Gain" proves, but that is the rare exception to the norm. Overwhelmingly Bay is a hack to rival anyone rated among the most notorious, and his money-factory juggernaut films represent nearly everything that is evil and wrong with the lowest-common-denominator-seeking industry that we find ourselves saddled with.

And Guillermo del Toro just gave him the biggest, most thunderous and glorious pimp-slap that has ever been recorded in human history.

Michael Bay needs to be strapped into a chair a la "A Clockwork Orange" and forced to watch "Pacific Rim" 47,000 times in a row. In between each repeat of the film, for 10 minutes the screen will flash the words "THIS IS HOW YOU DO GIANT ROBOTS FIGHTING, YOU ASS!!!" After he's done those words will be tattooed on the inside of his eyelids in florescent paint so he will forever see it when he closes his eyes in a constant reminder of how much his "Transformers" series sucks in comparison, and how to make the inevitable sequels better.

Lots of this is a good start. Honestly it's not that complicated.

What Guillermo del Toro has managed to accomplish with "Pacific Rim" is creating one of the most entertaining, thoroughly rousing and consistently surprising action films I've seen since...I can't even recall off the top of my head. Nothing has really ever come close with the obvious exception of some of the Millennial "Godzilla" films, and even they didn't have moves like "Pacific Rim" has.

"Pacific Rim" is a musclebound madman who throws you in his truck, starts flying down the highway at 193 mph and then, while still driving, sticks your head out the door and grinds your face off with the pavement like the world's most insane belt-sander until all that's left is a gleaming skull, but you're still alive but can only communicate by growling Opeth lyrics. Then he takes you to a garage where they chrome your head, strap you to the nose of a spaceship like you're a hood ornament and launches you into the sun while a crew of vikings do battle with space-axes on the outer hull of the ship. That's how hardcore "Pacific Rim" is: It should have space vikings.

Hell yes.

Like all of del Toro's works, "Pacific Rim" is a love letter to the genre it occupies. In this case the genre is in line with the Japanese "Kaiju" monster movies, of which the likes of "Godzilla" and "Gamera" and whatnot are the most famous. It's a bit of a niche genre, for sure, but few can argue as to the inherent awesome factor of seeing giant monsters beating the crap out of each other.
 
What "Pacific Rim" does is to take those movies, which were infamous for guys in rubber suits and corny special effects and give them a high-tech, flashy, steroided up shot in the arm that looks stunningly gorgeous and is essentially a dream come true for anybody who is a fan of the genre. But I have a hard time imagining someone not having a great time at "Pacific Rim," even if they don't know Barugon from an unusually large honey badger.

But if you catch that this shot is a direct reference to another film, "Pacific Rim" is for you.

The story flies by quick and dirty in the opening scene as we are told how giant monsters came to be here. Basically, a dimensional portal at the bottom of the Pacific ocean opened up, giant monsters we call Kaiju came through and started leveling cities, we built giant robots called Jaegers to fight them, the fight isn't going so great, and beyond that don't worry about it. That's all you need to know.
 
Blissfully "Pacific Rim" doesn't try to make the story more complex than it needs to be. And while some snobs may call "simplistic" on that setup, it makes perfect sense since the whole point is that nobody knows what the Kaiju are, where they actually come from or why they're attacking us. The reveal of that mystery is one of the driving elements of the plot. So call it "simple" if you want, but it's only that way because you only know as much as the characters do. Makes sense to me.

Um, excuse me? I expect deep characterization in my movie about giant monsters trampling Tokyo. Boo. Zero stars.

Our protagonist is Raleigh (Charlie Hunnam), a Jaeger pilot who experienced a horrific loss years earlier during a nasty Kaiju attack, and has since retired from the fighting. Now, as the Jaeger program has essentially been scrapped and the world is curling up on itself in defeat like you've just lost a game of "X-Com," Raleigh finds himself drawn back into the fight by Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba), his old commander. He and what's left of the Jaeger program gear up for one last effort to close the portal and stop the Kaiju permanently.

Raleigh is a typical action hero who would rather not be doing this and plays by his own rules, but Hunnam plays him well enough so as to make him a believable and likeable character. It's true that his character may be a bit of a trope, but what do you want from a hero in a giant robot movie? A wuss who meekly follows orders but complains the whole time? Guess what? That would give you Shinji from "Neon Genesis Evangelion." And screw that.

Yeah, dissenters of "Pacific Rim." You're right. It's not the same unless Raleigh is crying to himself and whacking off over her while she's in a coma. Because that's what I signed on for.

The one who really got my attention though was Rinko Kikuchi as Mako, Raleigh's eventual co-pilot whose only goal in life is to drive a Jaeger. Rinko is an absolutely dynamite actresses, and she played vulnerable and tough-as-nails at the same time better than anyone I've seen in a really, really long time. The child version of Mako we see in a flashback, played by young actress Mana Ashida in a performance which was so realistically heartrending that it was pretty tough to watch, only strengthened her character and made me like her even more. She might be one of my new favorite female sci-fi characters.

Did I mention she's also really, really hot? I should mention that at some point.

The whole cast is solid all around, with Idris Elba being the face of seriousness to ground us in the drama, and Clifton Collins Jr. as one of the Jaeger techs and Charlie Day and Burn Gorman as the two head-butting scientists lending some non-distracting and actually humorous comic relief. Normally I'm against comic relief as I feel it's usually unnecessary, but since these guys are actually funny without trying too hard, it works just fine. And I say that while not being a fan of Charlie Day, so that's pretty high praise coming from me. (I know, I know. Charlie Day is the greatest thing ever. I know. I've been told. I just can't stand listening to him. His voice is like an aural root canal.)

There are some characters who aren't that spectacular, not because they did a bad job or are poorly written, but the movie doesn't get quite enough time spent with them. Foremost amongst those is Chuck Hansen (Robert Kazinsky), one of the Australian Jaeger pilots who immediately butts heads with Raleigh and seemed like he was an interesting character, but because there's simply too much else going on, we're left with him simply being an "Iceman from Top Gun" type figure who's kind of a big jerk who is somewhat justified in his jerkiness. That's about it. I feel like there must have been a scene left on the cutting room floor that would have wrapped his character up a bit better.

But Chuck wasn't the worst. An issue I have in movies like this is when we're shown this collection of soldiers or awesome characters and whatnot, and before they really have a chance to do much, nearly all of them are wiped out nearly instantly once the fighting starts. I'm reminded of "Aliens," actually. Despite that being one of my favorite movies, the marines in that movie get like 70% annihilated roughly 2 minutes into their first fight. Those were awesome characters but they get slaughtered before they can do much of anything. Without getting too into spoilers, "Pacific Rim" is guilty of this, too. And yeah it kind of bugged me.

Then again...any movie that has Ron Perlman looking like a steampunk pimp out of an anime is automatically amazing.

What is amazing to me is that the action in "Pacific Rim" is compreshensible and gorgeous to look at while using barely if any slow-motion and taking place almost exclusively in the dark, often in the ocean and sometimes in the rain. It's so well framed and edited that there wasn't a single point in any of the fights that I didn't have a clear idea of what was going on, and that's including the moments when tentacles and smoke and debris and water are flying all over the place. It's a stunning example of how "Pacific Rim" got it right whereas "Transformers," even with it's slow-motion-in-broad-daylight handicap failed miserably. Guess that's what happens when you get a good director.

By the way, don't bother seeing "Pacific Rim" in 3D. I've seen it both ways, and the normal 2D version is (unsurprisingly) better. It's not that the 3D was bad, but it tended to make the action more difficult to make out, detracting from the normally fantastic action. The glasses making an already dark movie more so didn't help matters, either.

This NEEDS to become a franchise. Del Toro has mentioned that he has ideas if sequels were to be green-lit. I would pre-order my tickets today if that we the case. I don't care. Hell, I'll take three. Whatever it takes to make more of these. Del Toro, you crafty bastard. You've done it again. Make sure to swing by Michael Bay's house to deliver that flying elbow drop off the top turnbuckle that you owe him.

(Dramatic Reenactment)

Check out the trailer for "Pacific Rim!" And yes, that is the same woman who did GLaDOS as the voice of the Jaeger. Nerds, you're welcome.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Pacific Rim" is a perpetual buffet line of awesomeness. It will chisel a smile into the faces of anyone watching who possesses a pulse and a desire to have a good time. Apart from that, it's an expertly crafted action film which looks gorgeous, is exciting, and is a love letter to those monster movies that awaken the gleeful 10-year-old lurking somewhere in all but the most jaded of us. Probably the most fun I've had at the theater this year to date. It's an amazing movie, and Top 10 of 2013 nearly guaranteed.

Parker (2013)

Did you know Parker is the main character from over 20 novels by Donald Westlake (under the name Richard Stark) starting in the 60's, and that there's been like seven or so movies about him? Most would probably know him from "Payback" when he was played by Mel Gibson, and he was even played once by Robert Duvall, but the arguably more famous example was the first American film about him, 1967's "Point Blank," when he was called Walker and was portrayed by Lee Marvin. That's a solid film, as is "Payback," depending on which cut of it you watch (Director's Cut is way better).

Now we have "Parker," which seems like a horrible title when you consider it's the only film that's ever used the character's name. That would be like calling the next James Bond movie "007" or just "Bond." Of course now that I've said that, that's exactly what will happen some years from now when Daniel Craig is done and they decide to reboot the damn series. I really shouldn't even throw those ideas out there.

With Jason Statham portraying the character now, there was a decent chance that this would prove to be a solid flick. After all, Statham is, by all logical and mathematical calculations, A Mack Daddy, and can be tremendously entertaining even when saddled with sub-par material. You know, material that is kind of boring, or doesn't make a whole lot of sense and has some bad acting and characters that shouldn't even be there because they're pointless...

See what I did? I was implying in that last sentence that "Parker" contains all those above things because it's sub-par. That's just good writing right there.

And yes, Jason Statham DOES wear that stupid hat for most of the film. Because I take him more seriously that way.

The story is the standard "thief with morals" one, where the main character is predictably betrayed by his crew after a job and left for dead but is obviously still alive because the bad guys are freaking idiots. He decides to revenge himself upon them by stealing from his former crew, and then killing them. And that's the movie. It's not complicated, and if you've ever seen a movie featuring robbers in your life, or something direct-to-DVD starring Nicolas Cage lately, you will undoubtedly be able to call it shot-for-shot.

And you know what? That's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. If it's an entertaining film, by all means do the cliche stuff, because it can still be fun. This is doubly so when you've got a badass like Jason Statham doing his thing. In fact there are some things about it which would, under normal circumstances, relegate "Parker" to being merely one of Statham's acceptable but somewhat forgettable solo efforts like "Blitz" or "The Mechanic." That meaning it's not great, but is fine for what it is. "Parker" would have fit that bill were it not for the presence of one Ms. Jennifer Lopez, upon whose well-tanned shoulders most of the blame for the crap-factor can be placed.

I could think of more useless characters in movies given enough time, but Jennifer Lopez has to be one of the most egregious examples of "albatross around a film's neck" I've seen in a long time. She's a real-estate agent who becomes Parker's "partner." She doesn't do anything in finding Parker's former crew that Parker couldn't have easily done himself. She doesn't do anything with Parker getting his revenge that he couldn't have done himself. In fact she only gets in the way of that. Even the romantic angle between she and Parker goes nowhere because it can't go anywhere since Parker is taken and isn't interested in her. In fact that revelation is the last line Lopez has in the film.

"I never had a shot, did I?"

To be a decent character? No. No you didn't.

Whenever the film starts to get interesting with the former crew (headed by Michael Chiklis) doing a heist or Parker kicking a random mob hitman's ass or something that actually means something to the plot, the film seems to think that the best course of action would then be to spend 10 minutes going through Lopez's boring life dealing with her catty co-workers and soap-opera obsessed mother and her mother's annoying little dog. Great, movie. Thanks for that. After seeing Jason Statham bash a guy's head in before throwing him off a 30-story building, I really wanted to know about Cathy from the cubicle across the way stealing that commission from J-Lo. Because Cathy is who I'm concerned about in that situation.

The only thing Jennifer Lopez does which was of any kind of value is to hide the stolen property at the end of the movie. And she hides it in a place that Parker could have easily gotten into by himself. Great, that's great. Now will somebody PLEASE explain to me why she's even here?

Oh great. It's the "Alice Eve Effect" from "Star Trek Into Darkness" - Bad actresses stripping for no damn reason. Wonderful.

It's not even that Lopez was necessarily bad I suppose, but she's such an uninteresting and pointless character that you could have gotten Charlize Theron or Noomi Rapace for it and she still would have sucked as a character, and she still would have pulled the rip-chord on the film's momentum every time she showed up. Acting chops has little to do with it, although Lopez is certainly no prize catch for the casting department.

The villains in "Parker" didn't do much to inspire any kind of fear either. Micheal Chiklis and his crew come off as so inept and stupid that there's never much to imply that there is any way that Parker isn't going to absolutely wreck them. There's no tension here, because if the bad guys are too dumb to manage to finish off a totally immobile, horrifically injured man laying on the side of the road when they have at their disposal both a gun and a body of water deep enough to drown someone in, there is no reason for me to ever believe that they pose a threat to the hero.

 "Now, my most freaked out, cowardly and untrustworthy teammate - Go kill him! I'll just stand over here and not verify that you've done the job I've sent you to do, even though I know you'd have a difficult time doing it, and that repercussions will be severe if we don't kill this guy. I'm just going to take your word that you did it, because you're untrustworthy and kind of make a big mess of everything you try to do. That's how we professionals roll."

And if they were going for the "Parker is a cat toying with a mouse" angle, that would have been fine, but suddenly at the end there's a standoff and we're supposed to take these chuckle-heads seriously? Really? They're not even bright enough to notice their front door had been broken into. Then during the middle of the climactic fight where Parker is picking them off one by one, the very first thing one of them does when told to watch Jennifer Lopez is to put a hand down her blouse. Because there's never a time when being a creepy rapist isn't appropriate. And yes, he pretty much immediately gets shot to hell.

I'm more concerned about getting the timing on Bald Bull's charge right than I am of these chumps.

On top of everything else, there was a plethora of obnoxious flashbacks to things from 2 minutes ago that kept popping up throughout the film, and a lot of really, REALLY terrible dialogue that Statham was forced to recite. This is particularly notable in the beginning when Parker is reciting his "rules" to people he had no business giving a monologue to. Lopez also had one of those speeches later in the movie where she spills her guts to Parker in a scene which, like all her scenes, ended up being pointless. These weren't deal-breakers in of themselves, but they were just more little things to showcase the fact that this is just a poorly written and put together film.

Although there is ONE good line which I liked a lot, which can be seen at the very end of the trailer.

I can't say I'm totally disappointed here, considering I didn't expect much to begin with, but "Parker" was such a waste of time that it's just kind of sad. I know Statham can do better. Hell, I've seen him do better on numerous occasions. This movie needed a "Phantom Edit" to erase Jennifer Lopez like Jar Jar Binks. Then it'd be 40 minutes shorter and be merely mildly average.

THE BOTTOM LINE - There are so many movies better than "Parker" to watch. Pretty much go to Jason Statham's IMDB page and pick one at random. Unless you land on "In The Name of The King" you'll probably come out ahead. The most entertaining thing about "Parker" is hearing Nick Nolte talking like he's seconds away from 3 heartattacks and a stroke all at once.