Pacific Rim (2013) - Movie Review

'Pacific Rim' was a film I had little-to-no interest in seeing initially. The promotional material seemed to sell it as simply robots verses aliens, and I thought it would end up being a terrible waste of time and money.
Then the reviews came in, and after over a year, I decided to get the Blu-ray and sit down to watch it.
I was wrong.
While yes, the film is very much Robots VS Aliens, this is a simple premise which it uses as a basic template to explore complex and engaging character arcs, stunning action sequences and a fantastic story-line.
The acting is fantastic throughout, and the excellent screenplay gives the actors lots of subtle moments and moments to shine, and Guillermo del Toro's fantastic direction brings out the excellence of the screenplay.
The film all seems to come together to make an entertaining, engaging and enjoyable film with plenty of action, humour, drama and emotion to overall succeed in a way that so few action films do. Its not all about one element - its about all of them. The Robot VS Alien premise is just the premise, and the science fiction elements such as when two humans operate a robot (Jaeger), they are telepathically connected and have to come together in order to operate the Jaeger and kill the alien Kaijus. This allows for some great emotional moments, in particular one at the beginning which is a fantastic story element that expands the lead character.
We also have the score from Ramin Djawadi, who delivers an awesome and epic score while still including the smaller, subtler moments. The score knows when its needed, and comes in at just the right moments.
The action sequences are stellar and are enhanced by some truly brilliant Visual FX on both Jaegers and Kaijus, especially considering most of the battles take place in the sea in a storm, which usually would prove problematic to make the CGI look realistic, but 'Pacific Rim' pulls it off almost perfectly.
Overall:

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