Review #1,343: 'Pacific Rim: Uprising' (2018)

It's been five years since Idris Elba's brilliantly-named Stacker Pentecost cancelled the apocalypse in Guillermo del Toro's ultimately disappointing Pacific Rim. The 2013 film promised giant robots vs. Kaiju from one of the most visually arresting directors in the business and certainly delivered on that front, only it was spattered amidst an unnecessary convoluted mythology, questionable comic relief, and dull-as-cardboard characters played by equally dull actors. It barely registered domestically, but managed to quadruple its takings overseas, performing well in China especially. This, it would seem, is enough to justify a sequel not many were crying out for. Pacific Rim: Uprising also comes with extra baggage, with del Toro stepping aside for Steven S. DeKnight, who is perhaps best known for his TV work Spartacus and Daredevil.

Ten years have passed since Pentecost closed the inter-dimensional breach joining out world to that of the Kaiju. Many of the big cities still lie in ruin, and the landscape is littered with the skeletons of huge perished monsters. Pentecost's son Jake (John Boyega) feels more at home stealing Jaeger parts and selling them on the black market, as opposed to following in his hero father's footsteps. An encounter with Amara Namani (Cailee Spaeny), a young Jaeger enthusiast who illegally constructs smaller, but highly functional, Jaegers of her own, leads Jake back to the military base he was kicked out of years ago. After a talking to by his sister Mako (Rinko Kikuchi), Jake is eventually talked into helping train young pilots by his old friend/rival Nate Lambert (Scott Eastwood), just in time for the shady Shao Corporation's announcement that they have created a fleet of self-operating Jaegers. Naturally, this anger the pilots, and even more so when one of the new robots starts attacking Sydney. 

Uprising predictably falls into the sequel trap of making everything bigger but not necessarily better. While it doesn't shroud all of the action in night like the original, there's a sluggishness to the smack-downs that lack of heft of del Toro's hand. It's essentially a mash-up of Star Wars, X-Men: First Class and Transformers: The Last Knight, almost like a corporate hand has plucked out elements from more successful franchises in the hope that China will still lap it up and fail to notice the similarities. Del Toro's film was far from perfect, but it still had an auteur's touch, laying out a tangible and colourful world full of the director's quirks. Here the characters exist in a collection of post-apocalyptic cliches, not helped by a script (credited to four screenwriters) that fails to inject any sort of urgency to the story or dramatic weight to the characters. Boyega is always great, but after his success with Star Wars and impressive turn in Detroit, he really should be seeking out roles that will allow him to flex his acting muscles. It ends with a scene pleading for another sequel, but much like the recent Independence Day sequel, which closed with the same hopeful promise, I doubt any fan petitions will be started anytime soon.


Directed by: Steven S. DeKnight
Starring: John Boyega, Scott Eastwood, Cailee Spaeny, Burn Gorman, Charlie Day, Tian Jing, Rinko Kikuchi
Country: USA/China/UK

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,221: 'Fast & Furious 8' (2017)

By the time Paul Walker bailed and Vin Diesel only bothered to show up for a wink-and-a-smile cameo back in 2003 with the third instalment in the Fast & Furious franchise, Tokyo Drift, it seemed like the series started by Rob Cohen in 2001 as an entertaining Point Break rip-off was done and dusted. 14 years later, the eighth entry sits happily as the eleventh highest-grossing movie of all time, raking in a whopping $1.2 billion at the box-office. Having evolved from low-key crime thrillers with a street-racing twist to all-out, physics-defying spy adventure blockbusters, audiences are clearly not done with Dominic Toretto (Diesel) and his street-hood 'family'. The film's alternate title of The Fate of the Furious - keeping up with the series' trend of frustratingly difficult-to-follow title meddling - suggests that this may be the most ridiculous, balls-to-the-wall spectacle yet, and it certainly lives up to its billing.

Ever since previous fan favourites were cherry-picked to inexplicably form the gang of ass-kickers-for-hire the movies are now built around, the cast has rapidly expanded and individuals have been reduced to little more than the odd one-liner. When Dwayne Johnson's oiled man-mountain Hobbs was introduced to add some spice and charisma to a stagnant series, Vin Diesel found himself in the awkward position of hogging screen-time from an actor everyone would rather be seeing. This is very much Diesel's product and he takes things very seriously, so Fast & Furious 8 sees the two split up into two very tonally different story lines, in a move that may have been made to satisfy the needs of both actors, or to simply keep the two away from each other. Johnson made comments on social media criticising a certain cast member's behaviour, in a thinly-disguised jab at Diesel. The tension isn't evident in the final movie, but it does mean you're likely to spend half the time wishing you were with the former wrestler, especially when he teams up with the returning Jason Statham.

Dom growls and mumbles before turning his back on the gang when his honeymoon with Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) is rudely interrupted by a hacker known as Cipher (Charlize Theron), who blackmails the big lug into stealing an EMP device. Enter exposition device Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) and, for some reason, his partner played by Scott Eastwood, who round up the former car-jackers and criminals to steal it back before chaos is unleashed. And so the two stories unfold: One a moody drama that often turns quite violent, and the weirdly erotically-charged, but nevertheless amusing, penis-comparing adventures of Johnson and Statham. When you're watching a movie in which a submarine is 'jacked', it's clear that the mood of the latter better suits the franchise. Diesel's brooding and Theron's phoning-in don't make for particularly entertaining viewing, especially when it follows a scene of hacked autonomous CGI cars swarming through the city streets like a hoard of fast-moving zombies.

Characters seem to fill every inch of the screen, and it was a struggle to remember just what roles returning actors Elsa Pataky, Luke Evans and Djimon Honsou had played previously, although anoraks will have no trouble. To say it is a convoluted mess driven by a McGuffin would be an understatement, and it could be argued that this plot has been done before a few films ago. Nevertheless Fast & Furious 8 delivers when it fires up the nitrous oxide. While there's nothing to match Hobbs' Gatling-gun rampage in part 7, there is a punchy prison breakout scene, Tyrese Gibson ice-skating on a car door, and the aforementioned submarine. You came here for fast cars, and they are worked into the story whether it makes logical sense or not. If only Diesel would lighten up and not take a series built on fun so damn seriously, this could have been so much better. Fingers crossed for the Johnson/Statham spin-off though.


Directed by: F. Gary Gray
Starring: Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Charlize Theron, Kurt Russell, Scott Eastwood, Nathalie Emmanuel
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie