Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

LouHomey From my favorite movies..

Borgarkeri A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

Kayden This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Nelson Strang Long, drawn-out and insubstantial. A kind of Transformers for a more intelligent audience, but that really isn't saying much at all. There is some semblance of a story, but you don't care a fig for anyone and there's absolutely no sense of jeopardy. Overall, almost pointless.

IkhwanArif I like Guillermo Del Toro; I think he has a good vision for fantastical tales that requires translating the imagination onto the screen. Despite it's obvious major flaws, Pacific Rim succeeds in delivering the visual spectacle of rampaging colossi. Quite good in fact, you can - if you wanted to - be charitable to film merely on the basis of the fight between Mechs and Monsters is so well done, that you'll forgive Pacific Rim for being cringey in many instances throughout the film.To be fair, the story isn't bad. Travis Beachem wrote a straightforward and generic story of humankind's survival that is so transparently Anime inspired that the film could've done well - and perhaps even better - if it was made by Studio Ghibli. However, the script is bad and as I said, cringey a.f. and the acting is just as bad, that if there were more scenes with the human actors, the film would've been tarnished beyond repair. It is the level of acting that you'll find in Live Action TV productions of Ultraman and Black Masked Rider.Thankfully, there wasn't too, too much of it and there are ample scenes where the Jaegers (them giant robots) were smashing Kaiju (them monsters), wreaking devastation in the sea as well as in the city. The Mechs themselves were impressive to look at, though there were some scenes that didn't just make sense (like why didn't they use the sword early on?) The Kaijus are by far the most interesting; with great biology and abilities that in all honesty, I wish it would have been thoroughly explored.But all in all, I'm happy with what I saw.

apostateskeptic An incredible waste of $190M. The first twenty minutes were pure cringe; I was hoping, but not expecting, that it would somehow be a self-satire, considering it was as obnoxiously over-the-top as the Alliance military culture in Starship Troopers, but alas, no. Entirely sincere. The only good things of substance were the performances and the bits of passable dialog between Elba, the blonde guy (the main one, not the 5 other ones), and Kikuchi. The script was interminably and unrepentantly stupid without a shred of self awareness. There is no sense of what's going on in the wider world, and the action scenes - despite having technically competent effects and production design - were just boring. Another entirely derivative and forgettable action film, barely having a personality past its formula. The child actor playing little Mako in the flashback sequence was incredible, however. Bravo.PS If you want an actually compelling alien sci-fi actioner, watch Edge of Tomorrow. The very ending doesn't make sense, but it's compelling throughout.

JLRVancouver Monsters ("kaiju") are rising from the ocean floor and mankind's only hope are giant fighting robots ("jaegers"). Formulaic from beginning to end "Pacific Rim" is a tour-de-force visual extravaganza backgrounding a predictable, cliché'd story. Much of the imagery moves so quickly that it is difficult to tell what is happening (other than yet another big fight is underway). The "kaiju" were sufficiently similar looking and hard to scale that you had to be constantly told that the next one was bigger and badder (and they all looked like they had recently gargled with glowstick liquid). The big mechas were more interesting, with imagery reflecting the pop-culture that popularised the term 'kaiju' (I had 'Voltron' flashbacks), but the constant glare made them difficult to appreciate. The film contains lots of filler (training fights, a side trip to find a kaiju brain, etc) buttressing a minimal story and the script is mostly tough guy posturing, especially at the end, when every character seems to heroically say 'goodbye' several times. As is not uncommon in the genre, the story seemed to be written around the imagery rather than vice-versa, but generally, the state-of-the-art CGI was sufficiently impressive to keep me watching (and rewatching).