Jaegers are giant machines co-piloted by humans. Kaiju are giant monsters that threaten to destroy mankind. Jaegar pilots neurally connect themselves to their co-pilots while inside the machines. That's pretty much all you need to know to grasp the essence of Pacific Rim's plot which follows Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam), a Jaeger pilot who teams up with a new co-pilot, Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), to defeat the Kaiju. Both Raleigh and Mako suffer from traumatic experiences in their past: Raleigh lost a brother during a battle with the Kaiju, and Mako nearly died during Kaiju attack when she was little before Pentecost (Idris Elba), the commander of the Jaegars, saved her. Meanwhile, two scientists, Herman Gottlieb (Burn Gorman) and Geiszler (Charlie Day), try to find ways to gather more info about the Kaiju, i.e. by neurally connecting to their brain. After the first connected succeeds, Geiszler hopes to find another Kaiju brain which leads him to organ-seller Hannibal Chau (Ron Perlman).

      With a less over-simplistic, dumbed-down and stilted screenplay, Pacific Rim could have been a suspenseful, memorable, smart summer blockbuster. If it has exhilarating action sequences, it could have been fun---dumb and shallow fun, perhaps, but at least it would have been enjoyed enough on a purely superficial level a la Transformers. Instead, director Guillermo del Toro and screenwriter Travis Beacham have created a loud, inane sci-fi action thriller with many plot-holes and tedious, increasingly exhausting action sequences. Those sequences have impressive and clearly expensive CGI effects, but the action itself is too hard to see clearly because most of it takes place at night in the rain while the camera moves too quickly for you to absorb or even comprehend what you're watching. The attempts to add some depth to the characters via flashbacks don't effectively increase your emotional investment in these characters' lives; the flashbacks regarding Mako's traumatic past are tacked-on here in a rather contrived fashion. Idris Elba, Charlie Hunnam and Rinko Kikuchi all have decent acting skills and charmisma, but they're underserved by the weak screenplay. Only the cameo by the scene-stealing Ron Perlman adds any kind of oomph to the film; Pacific Rim could have used more of him.

      There's no denying that brilliance can be found within Guillermo del Toro as a filmmaker (case-in-point: Pan's Labyrinth). Unfortunately, his brilliance has been washed away here and overrun by the blandness of Hollywood that dumbs everything down for the masses and repeats too many similar scenes over and over. Perhaps there'll be a director's cut in the future that will include some of del Toro's brilliance. For the time being, though, you won't find any of it in this underwhelming version which overstays its welcome at 2 hours and 11 minutes. Please be sure to stay through the first few minutes of the end credits for an additional scene.