Pacific Rim

By John P. McCarthy, Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) – Anyone with a hankering for a 21st-century Godzilla movie, or anxiously awaiting the next “Transformers” instalment, will cheer the advent of “Pacific Rim” (Warner Bros.).

Those not clamouring for either of the above yet amenable to an escapist sci-fi spectacle (also available in 3-D and Imax) should also welcome it.

The only major content pitfalls are intermittent bad language and the genre’s usual blind spot concerning the destruction and suffering endured prior to someone or something saving the day. Unnerving rather than morally inappropriate, the action is too intense for children.

In the very near future, a breach at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean becomes a portal for alien monsters redolent of Godzilla, the mutant marauder of 1950s Japanese cinema. The first wave of Kaiju, Japanese for “giant beast,” attacks San Francisco, Manila and Mexico’s Baja Peninsula.

The world’s armies eventually repel them using tanks and aircraft, but it’s obvious a new kind of weapon is needed. So nations band together to construct huge robots called Jaegers, after the German word for fighters. Humans operate the machines, yet to fully control them the minds of two pilots must be melded through a neural bridge.

In an early scene, Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) and his brother Yancy (Diego Klattenhoff) take their Jaeger into battle off the coast of Alaska. When they disobey orders and rescue a fishing vessel, their mission goes tragically awry and Raleigh quits the pilot corps. Five years later, world leaders decide to decommission the Jaegers and build a wall to protect mankind.

The soldier in charge of the Jaeger program, Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba), enlists Raleigh’s help in a last-ditch plan to stop the increasingly destructive incursions using the four remaining robots. From a Hong Kong base, Chinese, Russian and Australian teams, along with Raleigh and an untested female pilot Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), try to seal the breach with a nuclear warhead.

The fate of everyone on earth rests in the hands of a small group of intrepid soldiers and engineers. Comic relief is provided by Dr. Newton Geiszler (Charlie Day), a whiny scientist who attempts a mind meld between a human and a Kaiju. Meaningful human interactions are woven into the story – for example, testosterone-fuelled friction amongst rival pilots and romance between Raleigh and Mako-but they’re incidental.

“Pacific Rim” is primarily interested in our fascination with monsters, machines and mayhem. And there’s no one better to imagine fantasy, fear and fisticuffs on a massive scale than Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, the genius behind the “Hellboy” movies and critically acclaimed titles such as “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “The Devil’s Backbone.”

For his most commercial project to date, del Toro collaborated with Industrial Light & Magic (“Star Wars”) to fashion special effects that often trigger awe. The overall design is dominated by steel and iron — even the Kaiju appear more synthetic than organic — which contributes to the film’s dark look. Constant rainfall and setting the majority of sequences at night on the surface of, or beneath, the sea accentuates the murkiness. Still, it’s difficult to gainsay the stunning visuals.

Del Toro and co-screenwriter Travis Beacham take a minimalist approach to exposition, doling out information with a breezy confidence that discourages questions. Whether everything passes scientific muster, the shortage of details makes for a smoother ride. That said, any glossing over of the incalculable devastation and loss of life that occurs en route to civilization being saved is troubling.

Using the selfless heroism of the principal combatants to highlight the strength of the human spirit constitutes action-movie boilerplate. A slightly less common theme is the solidarity exhibited by the peoples and governments of the world when a common enemy surfaces.

Undoubtedly, mankind coming together and using technology to thwart an alien invasion is a positive thing. In reality, however, it’s much more probable that men will use killing machines like Jaegers against one another. We may flock to summer movies to forget about real-life problems for a short time, but there’s no escaping the fact that this scenario is more frightening than computer-generated Kaiju rising from a virtual sea.

The film contains much intense but bloodless sci-fi violence between robots and alien creatures, brief sexual banter and occasional crude and profane language. Possibly acceptable for older teens.

 

Dark Skies

By John Mulderig, Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) – The restrained, but not overly original, thriller “Dark Skies” (Dimension) comes backed by the producers behind the “Paranormal Activity” franchise. And, both for better and worse, it shows.

Thus, writer-director Scott Stewart, like his “Paranormal” counterparts, presents viewers with comparatively little violence; only one passing scene relies, for its effect, on the sight of blood. But some of the proceedings — like the inexplicable rearranging of various kitchen items – feel too familiar, by now, to be scary.

As for the found footage device, Stewart holds off on introducing it, seemingly as long as he dares. But even so, its eventual, seemingly inevitable, appearance is likely to inspire a weary sigh.

The film’s premise also feels well-worn: Ordinary suburban couple Lacy (Keri Russell) and Daniel (Josh Hamilton) Barrett and their sons – teen Jessie (Dakota Goyo) and 6-year-old Sam (Kadan Rockett) – are beset by a series of disturbing events.

Baffled and frightened, the parents eventually turn to reclusive conspiracy theorist Edwin Pollard (J.K. Simmons). His explanation indicates that the Barretts have unwittingly drawn the attention of some highly unusual, and potentially dangerous, visitors.

Stewart works into his script the pro-family notion that clan discord – under economic pressure, Lacy and Daniel have been quarrelling – assists dark forces. But, with Jessie going through a rebellious phase, Stewart also shows us some adolescent experimentation with drugs, pornography and other forms of sexuality that make his eerie offering unsuitable for kids.

The film contains fleeting gore, brief scenes of sensuality, some involving teens, nongraphic marital lovemaking, a couple of uses of profanity and a smattering of crude and crass language.

 

Killing Them Softly

By John Mulderig, Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) – Though ambitious and well-acted, the crime drama “Killing Them Softly” (Weinstein) is also brutally violent and deeply cynical. Taken together, its explosive gore and jaundiced view of the world make it unsuitable for audiences of any age.

That’s all the more unfortunate since, like some of its best Depression-era predecessors, writer-director Andrew Dominik’s descent into the law-flouting underworld has a point to make about the ethical flaws hidden within that environment’s seemingly more respectable, aboveground counterpart.

The tautly maintained action begins as three small-time thieves – would-be wise guy Johnny (Vincent Curatola), down-on-his-luck ex-con Frankie (Scoot McNairy) and narcotics-addled Australian lowlife Russell (Ben Mendelsohn) — plot a raid on a Mafia-protected gambling den. They’re hoping to pin the blame for their heist on Markie (Ray Liotta), the card dealer who runs the operation.

As flashbacks reveal, Markie once pulled off an inside job by hiring thugs to carry out a similar robbery, but was eventually forgiven by his mob superiors. So the trio behind this new caper hopes the higher-ups will assume Markie is the traitorous mastermind this time as well.

Their plan succeeds initially. But things begin to unravel when a businesslike, appropriately anonymous Cosa Nostra middle manager (Richard Jenkins) sets relentlessly professional hit man Jackie Cogan (a subdued, smoldering Brad Pitt) on their trail.

Dominik uses sound bites from the 2008 financial crisis to suggest a moral equivalence between Wall Street and organized crime, an equation some might find convincing, others merely facile. He also employs then-Sen. Barack Obama’s soaring rhetoric from the same year’s presidential campaign to imply that the American dream an idealistic delusion.

As embodied in Pitt’s casually murderous character, and that of Mickey (James Gandolfini) – a fellow gun-for-hire who’s on the skids – Dominik’s corrosive satire goes deeper still, undermining all notions of morality and, indeed, of meaning.

Slow-motion rub-outs and the sight of a wounded character crawling in his own blood may be intended as an unflinching look at the consequences of amoral mayhem. But their explicitness – one scene even recalls the horrifying details of Abraham Zapruder’s famous home movie of the assassination of President Kennedy – still goes beyond the pale.

The film contains excessive graphic violence, including gruesome murders and a prolonged, bloody beating, drug use, brief partial rear nudity, a prostitution theme, seamy sexual talk, numerous instances of profanity and pervasive rough and crude language.

Grown Ups 2

By Kurt Jensen, Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) – Eventually, Adam Sandler is going to make a film that consists entirely of a single unbroken stream of urine. Until then, there’s “Grown Ups 2” (Columbia), which comes fairly close.

This nearly plotless sequel to his 2010 comedy consists of a series of vignettes that abandon character development for sight gags, nearly all of them involving body functions, most of them scatological, and hits to the crotch when they don’t involve leering at women’s breasts.

Director Dennis Dugan and Sandler, who co-wrote with Fred Wolf and Tim Herlihy, pick up the story of Sandler’s successful Hollywood producer Lenny Feder, who has returned to his hometown with wife Roxanne (Salma Hayek Pinoult) and their three children. He continues his adventures with former high school classmates Eric (Kevin James), Kurt (Chris Rock) and Marcus (David Spade) on the last day of the school year.

Marcus deals with his newly discovered and thuggish out-of-wedlock son, Braden (Alexander Ludwig). Eric has an unseemly attachment to his mother (Georgia Engel). Lenny deals with old issues involving bully Tommy (Steve Austin). Kurt tries to find a way to exploit the fact that wife Deanne (Maya Rudolph) has forgotten their wedding anniversary. Collectively, they deal with the bullying of a noisy group of frat boys who have taken over their childhood swimming hole.

In this movie’s universe, the only purpose women in exercise tights have are for ogling, bald men are for slapping around, and Nick Swardson’s mentally ill and over-medicated bus driver, Nick, is for a wide range of crude physical humor when he’s not leering at a gay exercise instructor.

Nearly every possible sight gag involving excretory functions, whether with beer bottles or a soft-serve ice cream machine, is put into use, beginning with a runaway deer in the opening minutes. For good measure, there are three vomiting sequences. The tenuous plot threads combine during Lenny’s raucous ’80s party at the finish.

The film contains nearly nonstop scatological references, fleeting rear male nudity, mild sexual banter and fleeting crass language.