【电影简介】

当被称为怪兽的外星怪物从海中势不可挡地冒出来时，它们带来的，是一场夺取百万生命和人类资源的战争。接连摧毁旧金山、马尼拉和墨西哥等城市后，怪兽数量与攻击次数越来越多。为了对抗怪兽的袭击，人类启动代号“机甲猎人”（Jaeger）的作战计划，亦即以“巨大神经元合体机械人”为地球设下防卫机制。

两名驾驶员必须透过神经元合体，才能同步操纵巨大的机械人，一旦连结失败，就会引发大灾难，只是这群配备精良的机械人，却仍然挡不住汹涌袭来的残暴巨兽。

驾驶员莱理（查理·汉纳姆饰）和哥哥在一场怪兽作战中，哥哥不幸被怪兽吞噬，莱理因此意志消沉，留在阿拉斯加打零工维生。但随着怪兽威力越来越强大，攻击越来越频繁之际，机甲猎人数量也越来越少。莱理和日本菜鸟女驾驶麻子（菊地凛子饰）必须驾驶老旧机甲猎人吉普赛，担负起拯救全世界的重责大任，在面对怪兽威胁与两人各自伤痛记忆的过往，他们能够成功达成任务吗？

【音频文本】

Sci-fi action film Pacific Rim features overwhelming visual effects. And yes, when I say overwhelming, it means the visuals are good enough to make you overlook the film's other failings.

Written by Guillermo del Toro and Travis Beacham, the story is set in the 2020s, when colossal alien monsters pass through inter-dimensional portals on the floor of the Pacific Ocean to plague the human world. Inresponse, the Pacific Nations pool their resources and build equally colossal humanoid machines to fight the behemoths. But as the attacks come in ever shorter intervals and the cost of maintenance multiplies, humans must find a solution to deal with the gigantic pest problem once and for all.

"Pacific Rim" offers practically everything I wanted to see but wasn't able to when I was still a boy. TheTransformers series was good enough to grab boys' attention and inspire their interest, but was not alwaysaired and besides, the episodes were too short. The Japanese Dinosaur Corps Koseidon TV series lasted longenough, but they were lame even in the eyes of an 8-year-old kid. "Pacific Rim" provides a real feast for the eyes and ears about giant machines and huge beasts, because unlike the Transformers film series where you can barely tell one robot from another amidst the non-stop action, the machines in "Pacific Rim" are of a more simplistic yet majestic design, and their movements are slower, and therefore more easily registered by the audience.

More importantly, the sensational imagery does not come all at once, but is spread across the length of the film and accumulates. Certainly, there has to some action in the background to wet the audience's appetite at the very beginning, but after that, the action scenes are carefully inserted between much softer parts of the story. Character development efforts are successful to a large extent. Lead actress Rinko Kikuchi is very memorable for her portrayal of a shy yet determined fighter, and supporting actor Idris Elba does a better job than male actor Charlie Hunnam, the latter is good at fighting but not so much at leaving other impressions.

Director del Toro believes this makes a good film for kids, because it speaks loudly about trust and crossing the barriers of color, sex, beliefs and so on. However, an American colleague of mine seems to disagree. As a parent, he thinks it is a good idea to protect kids from such intensive action films. Well, that'sbad news for boys with protective parents who won't be able to enjoy a thrilling Kaiju movie that would definitely set their imagination free.

On a scale from one to ten, I give "Pacific Rim" a seven.

轻松调频EZFM 微信mrweekly