Pacific Rim - Cinema Review

Motion pictures at the cinema have always been about spectacle. From the earliest recordings of trains arriving where audience members fled in fear thinking it would actually keep travelling through the screen and towards them. To modern day blockbusters; packed with special effects and bombastic dramatic stylising to try and retain it's purpose against the convenience of television, dvds and the internet. This obsession with dazzling the audience all too often results in a lacklustre or mediocre storyline, forgetting that we need to be immersed in the plot to properly feel amazement at those spectacular stand out moments. Pacific Rim understands this to an almost perfect degree.

The premise is relatively simple in that hostile monsters called Kaiju have emerged from the ocean floor and humanity's best defence lies with towering mechanical robots called Jaegers. Said robots need to be piloted by two people in order to deal with the mental strain of controlling these colossal mechs. Things get a bit more complicated when the two pilots must experience a melding of minds in order to work together and control the Jaegers. This perfectly sets up our relatable human characters in roles deeply intertwined with the spectacle of Godzilla creatures fighting gargantuan killer robots and avoids the need to have humans dragged into the fray on flimsy pretences and spend the whole time cowering beneath bloody robot testicles.

I'm running out of adjectives for just how big these things are...

The obvious comparison is with the aforeimplied Transformers movies but Pacific Rim frankly blows them out of the water. One of the most frustrating things with those patronising, clueless nauseating tumours of films was losing track of the action because of a camera too focused on a robot's knee as it goes flying across the screen. Mercifully Pacific Rim suffers very few of these moments, and when it's not pulling the camera back to give us some perspective on the size of the combatants and actually enhancing the epic atmosphere, it has the courtesy to hold a closer shot for a few valuable seconds more so we can determine what the hell we're looking at.

 Another important point is that the Jaegers are far from indestructible. There is a high point, through the years, of victory over the monsters that the film fleetingly visits but most of the film has humanity on its last legs with only four of the giant mechs surviving to struggle on. Hulls are breached, chests are clawed open, arms torn off and pilots ripped from supposed safety into the Kaiju's merciless imposing jaws. This vulnerability is established early on and there's no magical maguffins to restore the Jaegars instantly. Just months or sometimes years of hard labour, assuming the mech survives to return to base and this is without mentioning the mental scarring the pilots can suffer as a result of melding with co-pilot and machine.

The characters themselves are fairly considered and with depth to be explored as the film progresses. There are a few wincing stereotypes in the form of Asian martial artists and cold brutish Russians playing the parts of other Jaegar pilots but the more important characters thankfully come across as more convincing and engaging. After the film several plot holes became slowly apparent and it dawns that Pacific Rim is not perfect in terms of its story.
However the important point to note is that for me personally, these revelations happened after the film had finished and the plot holds up enough to keep you interested and invested throughout its actual showing.

Telling you just enough to keep watching but not enough to dispel the mysteries.

The film balances several storylines involving the Jaegar pilots, the military general in charge of the pilots and quirky scientists who attempt to find the cause of the monstrous Kaiju. The pacing is exceptional and we're never kept too long or too briefly with any of the main characters but they prove diverse enough to appeal to a wide range of audiences. The acting is also far better than i'm used to seeing in these kinds of films and there is a fantastic balance of gripping physical drama in the action scenes and moving emotional scenes dealing with the mental impact this new world of mammoth monsters has on the average human. The overall feeling you get from Pacific Rim is still one of spectacle but it's spectacle filmmaking how it should be done, by not forgetting the substance and foundations needed for us to feel tension, excitement and awe in the first place.

Talking To Tumbleweeds

This is the closest you'll probably get to an informative "update" from me but as persistent followers will see, i've rejiggered the place. This should make it easier for you to find certain articles and allows me to branch out into any other text-based-hilarity areas i think of in the future. Starting with novel style extracts from my usually dull, infertile life that have pierced the smog of tedium and i consider worthy of sharing.

I'll also continue the reviews when i get the chance and i'll be occasionally linking videos from my youtube efforts into written supplements over here. I might even link in a rather ridiculous facebook venture i've been working on for a while now...we'll see. I hope the handful of readers i've impressed enough to keep this shit up enjoy the new layout and features.

From Your Pungently Balsamic Steve.

Steve Visits Sidney Street Sainsburys...

27 April 2013 at 18:51

People of Cambridge, you are the deer in the headlights. You are the reflection of the headlights in the deer's eyes. For a place so blatantly overpopulated you are the most slack-jawed, brain-dead, oblivious imbecilic herd of cattle ever to roam the Earth, and i lived in Essex most of my life.

After staring at Google Maps for half an hour, i leave my usual discomfort zone and head into the city centre in search of a store where i have regrettably obtained a job interview next week. Sainsburys. Oh you mean the place a mere 15 minutes from your house? How convenient! No...Sidney Street Sainsburys...

After a pointless ten minute detour that i only become aware of upon reaching a street i've reached before by a far easier, quicker alternative. I reach the single inner city street i recognise from the days i tried to fool myself i could enjoy club culture like a normal student. I ignore the minor setback and wade through the diverse, multilingual and annoyingly attractive population until i'm lost amongst cathedrals, museums and buskers, where it occurs to me that when your city is made up entirely of landmarks, they cease to remain landmarks in any useful sense of the word.

My sieve brain claws a street name from the sand, mud and smoke in my head. "St. Andrews Street" is roughly the right direction to be heading down. I waltz and trip my way through the crowds, sidestepping into the road and bouncing off the walls in absolutely only the literal definition of the phrase. Confusingly the all too familiar orange and blue is already in sight, a Sainsburys "Local". I can't be there already, this isn't near where i pictured Sidney Street in my head, although on the other hand my navigational skills were proven defunct mere minutes ago...I stick to the original plan and bypass the potential decoy.

The ridiculously overcrowded tightrope pathways narrow whilst the bumbling zombies multiply and it becomes a struggle to even place your foot down where someone else's isn't. Nearby a hunchback blows into a harmonica, indecisive cyclists mount and dismount continuously without actually moving anywhere, giddy tourists laugh and point cameras at things forcing pedestrians to either hastily scuffle in and out of shot or take a wide berth into the road and avoid their shutter completely and my least favourite diseased organism also emerges in full force.

The blissfully ignorant, sauntering, hip holding couples sway in the breeze and block any attempt i make to pass them. I eventually concede into the road and surge forward whilst they glance at me like i'm an anomaly or a creature in a zoo. "Oh look honey! the miserable ginger giant! Take a picture will you?" I suppress the urge to bludgeon them to death with a bicycle chain and soldier on towards a vague recollection of a point where the path branches off and ultimately leads to the fabled, acceptingly misspelled "Sidney Street"

A brief shower suddenly falls and i stupidly hope this will dissipate the crowds somewhat, but of course, they've all brought their umbrellas. I finally reach a slight bend in the path that may or may not be the turning i need. Refusing to join the other gawping wanderers standing around lost due to a unique spatial awareness enlightening me to the fact that no one wants to be out here for any longer than the very minimum required and even less desires being delayed by dopey morons who can't read a map, i take the arguable left and walk past a map that could well have helped.

Perseverance pays off and the mercifully signposted "Sidney Street Sainsburys" comes into view. I ignore the big issue man, grab a basket without any real idea of what to buy and head inside. It becomes quickly apparent that i've stumbled into the deepest, darkest circle of hell, the labyrinth that killed Jack Nicholson, an endless maze and absolute nadir of efficient interior design. I somehow find myself in both the vegetable section and the checkout, i flail around helplessly until i approach the closest thing resembling an aisle in this mess.

I'm surrounded by coke, milk and meat and the only obvious opening is blockaded by a formation of elderly and middle aged women. If outside was herding cattle, this was pebbles trying to traverse the inside of a wire. I couldn't go more than 3 seconds without becoming involuntarily grossly intimate with another shopper and within a minute i could tell you all their darkest secrets and quantities of nasal hair. I swim deeper into the abyss and become trapped in a whirlpool of cramped food retail, passing the same sections several times before i manage to grasp a bottle of something i think i vaguely need.

As always, in times of crisis i turn to the savoury cocaine of pringles and attempt to buy a pot or twelve, however to my despair they're completely absent from this priority-stricken store and despite anchoring myself in the crisps section for as long as possible they simply don't exist this deep into Cambridge. I mournfully lasso myself towards the checkout and am greeted by a hulking mass of unfortunate grey death that terrifies me as the concept of a potential colleague. The woman in front indulges her fetish for rug burns by resting her elbows on the conveyor belt and with as much social courtesy as i've come to expect retains them there whilst i place my bottles of coke, cooking oil and lucozade around her bony extremities.

I briefly reflect on a theory that years of lucozade abuse has given me an immunity to all it's benefits as the bottle i downed before leaving the house shows no sign of assisting this agonising onslaught. The skinny woman throws a box of cupcakes into her bag faster than incriminating evidence of paedophilia and Ms. Gollum coughs up a grunt of recognition as she checks out my items. I clutch at the orange bags in front of me to no avail realising an obnoxious binding is preventing me from taking any. Am i going to have the pay for a bloody bag? I turn to Snorlax and ask "can i use these bags?" There is no response. Fair enough, it's busy, i tend to talk too quietly. "Can i use these bags please?" i repeat louder. The words ricochet off her impervious, soulless grey mound and clatter to the floor silently.

She/he/it lifts the next customer's bag of peas in a manner that could be perceived as threatening, so i attempt to shove all the bottles into my string bag, which afterwards barely manages to close and has no hope of returning to my back. I desperately try to escape the purgatory and on approaching the exit see the selection of pringles on display by the door. BY THE DOOR. Did a lobotomised monkey raised by Danny Dyer design this place? Not only this but they were beyond an eager old man shaking a charity pot at you. They might as well have constructed the temple of doom around them. I kept expecting to see the gatekeeper who demands a blood sacrifice to the god of disembodied, flamboyantly moustachioed heads.

As another lost shopper finally snaps and succumbs to cannibalism i leave the screams of despair and exit the shop now dealing with carrying a liquid wrecking ball that demolishes my shins with every step. By the time i reach the familiar routine and comparative emptiness of Mill Road it takes every ounce of self-restraint not to simply give up, sit down and scream at anyone within a metre of me. The final blow comes with the horrifying sight of my own soulless reflection in the door to my house and the realisation that i would actually completely fit in with the dead-eyed husks inhabiting that store.