Movie: 3D Pacific Rim

First of all, I'm very glad that this movie was made by Guillermo del Toro and not Zach Snyder. Mr Snyder, whose Man of Steel was way too over the top for me, should have a look at this movie to see just how to combine kick-ass special effects and action scenes with a fantasy story.

This is great entertainment, even though at first look, giant robots saving the world from aliens from another dimension sounds a bit childish. In fact it is childish, and the kids at the screening I went to loved it, but that doesn't mean that adults can't call up their inner child and enjoy it as well, perhaps on a different level than kids would.

I enjoyed playing the "Now, where have I seen that actor before?" game. A lot of them are TV actors, probably to keep the cost down, and most of them appear to be British. The only actor that I knew straight away was Ron Pearlman. The lead actor, Charlie Hunnam, is somebody I have never seen before. but he is an example of perfect casting. The lead actress, Rinko Kikuchi, was in a film called Babel (was she the one who took all her clothes off?). And there were two actors who I knew, but just couldn't quite put my finger on where they were from. So when I got home I jumped straight onto the IMDB to do a little bit of research. One is Clifton Collins, who played Thomas in one of my favourite shows from a couple of years ago, The Event,  and the other was Burn Gorman, who was in the short lived Torchwood.

I had to laugh at some of the attempted accents though. There are two Australian characters, one played by a British actor, Robert Kazinsky, and the other by an American actor, Max Martini. I don't think they were really trying very hard. They both sounded British to me.

The music is excellent, done by another TV guy, Ramin Djawadi, although he did the first Iron Man movie, and the third Blade movie. He did the Game of Thrones music, as well the music for a Medal of Honour video game. Quite a varied body of work.