Butler's Cinema Scene

“PACIFIC  RIM” My rating:  C + (Opening wide on July 12)

131 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

There is absolutely no reason why a reasonably intelligent, over-30 lover of the dramatic arts needs to slap down $10 or so to watch “Pacific Rim.”

That said, if such an aforementioned individual does find himself in a theater watching this noisy (as in rock-concert loud) romp, he’ll be okay. Might even enjoy himself.

If you’ve seen the trailers you know that “Pacific Rim” is a lot like a Transformers movie mated to a Godzilla movie and injected with steroids – a description that sounds impossible (louder and busier than a Michael Bay movie?), but there you have it.

The pitch: Giant robotic figures battle giant saurian creatures.

But “Pacific Rim” was written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, the Spanish horror/sci-fi aficionado who has given us two flat-out masterpieces set in the Spanish Civil War  (“The Devil’s Backbone” and “Pan’s Labyrinth”)  and the devilishly enjoyable (thanks to Ron Perlman’s monumental perf in the title role)  “Hellboy.”

Del Toro is in summer blockbuster mode here, which means you won’t get a whole lot in the way of character development, complicated motivations or subtlety in just about any phase of this production.

But I gotta admit, his childlike enthusiasm is infectious.

Orson Welles once described a movie set as the greatest toy train a boy could ask for. Only for del Toro a movie is a 60-story mechanical man using a seagoing oil tanker as a baseball bat.

The story? Well, apparently big lizard-like aliens called Kaiju have been entering our world through a time/space rift at the bottom of the Pacific. These critters seriously ravaged the adjacent coastlines before being held at bay by the Jaegers, huge robots piloted by two humans who must meld their minds in something called the “drift” in order to operate these massive fighting machines.

Charlie Hunnam

Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam, of TV’s “Sons of Anarchy”) is a former Jaeger operator who has dropped off the map after his co-pilot brother was killed in an encounter with a Kaiju. Now he’s called back into action by his old commander, Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba), who reveals that the invaders are coming so fast and furious and the human’s supply of Jaegers so depleted that humanity’s future rests on a suicide mission to deposit a nuclear warhead in the underwater “gate” through which the Kaiju pass.

Among the supporting characters are Mako (Rinko Kikuchi), an orphan raised by Pentecost and determined to fill a slot as a Jaeger pilot; Dr. Geisler (Charlie Day), a biologist who studies Kaiju corpses for clues to their weaknesses while providing comic relief; Gottlieb (Burn Gorman), Geisler’s scientific nemesis (think 007’s M as a complete geek); and del Toro regular Perlman as a black market dealer in Kaiju parts.

Rinko Kikuchi

It’s not so much the story or the characters that keep “Pacific Rim” perking along as del Toro’s dweebish fascination with the world and environments he has created. He gives us a masterful sequence showing how two pilots are awakened in the middle of the night to go through a complex suiting-up process before being deposited in the “head” of their Jaeger. The filmmaker’s utter love of the technology he and his collaborators have dreamed up is evident in every frame.

And whereas the smack-downs in the “Transformer” movies have always struck me as impossible to follow, del Toro stages his fights more like a real-life wrestling match – albeit one in which one opponent spits acid and electromagnetic pulses and the other has limbs outfitted with gigantic buzzsaws, rocket launchers and other armaments.

Idris Elba

The film’s technical panache is pretty amazing even in an era when movie magic is commonplace. Much of the fighting takes place in the ocean, and the tidal waves and artificial “rain” stirred up by the combat is rendered with a realism that is occasionally jaw-dropping.

Acting honors go to the Perlman for his brief but very amusing performance as a crime lord (stick around for the final credits…’nuff said) and to Elba, who whether in immaculately tailored suit or shiny black body armor is always the most interesting thing on the screen (even when playing a standard-issue ramrod-in-the-tushie military type).

Hunnam has the unenviable task of making us care about a fairly colorless character. Good thing he possesses built-in charisma. Kikuchi is fine as the ambitious yet low-keyed Mako.

For the record, a few days before opening it was announced that “Pacific Rim’s” title had been officially changed to “Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures Pacific Rim,” a bit of corporate ass-hattery that I, for one, refuse to countenance.

| Robert W. Butler