Jaeger Meister! Pacific Rim!

The weather just keeps getting worse - time was a "Category 4" meant a bad tornado was coming. In Pacific Rim, Guillermo del Toro's eye-rupturing 'bots-against-beasts extravaganza, the Category system is used to gauge the severity of attack from the bestiary of Lovecraftian behemoths that have taken to breaching a dimensional portal and laying siege to the cities of Earth.

Pacific Rim is clearly Guillermo del Toro's love letter to the Japanese monster movies of his youth, and as someone who remembers all too well gaping up at afternoon airings of War of the Gargantuas, I can tell you it's extremely successful and ridiculously entertaining. Pairs of human pilots operate the gigantic mecha robot vehicles (Jaegers) that mankind has banded together to create to fight off and kill the horrific monsters (Kaiju). I'm a big fan of Charlie Hunnam (Sons of Anarchy - still can't believe he's British), and he does a great job as the wounded Jaeger pilot out for some payback. Idris Elba is the man in charge of it all, trying to galvanize the remnants of the fading Jaeger program. Rinko Kikuchi (Babel) is the untested pilot candidate with her own score to settle. Just wait for the scenes depicting the memories of her childhood terror during the first Kaiju attacks.

Each Jaeger is more spectacular than the last. The design and look of Pacific Rim is pretty jaw-dropping. It's the biggest assemblage of steel and hydraulics I can remember seeing and it's spectacularly well shot. All that plus you get a dynamite Ron Perlman part, Charlie Day and the superb Burn Gorman. It truly cries out to be experienced on the biggest screen you can find - with an audience. The novelty of the picture reminded me of films like Independence Day, The Matrix and Blade Runner - movies that showed us a universe we'd never really seen on film before, while involving and connecting with the audience. If the film has a weakness, it's that the second act battle sequence is so spectacular and awesome, the third act sequence seems a little mild in comparison. Still - I loved it and while the characterizations are pulpy and thin, so were the films Pacific Rim tips its helmet to. The bottom line on Guillermo's vision here is fun.

del Toro took a hard one to the chin last weekend, coming in 3rd on opening weekend behind Grown Ups 2. The naysayers are carping that fans can't turn out to support a visionary genre picture - let's help prove them the hell wrong. Pacific Rim is easily one of the two best films of the summer (along with Star Trek Into Darkness) and you should really experience it at the Shatterdome while you can. Just don't leave too early, as the end credits may have a little treat for you.

Thanks, Guillermo - this movie came at a time when I really needed an escape and it was great to be ten again, gazing back up at the enormity of man versus monster.