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'Pacific Rim' is only boring battles

( PG-13 ) ( Monitor Movie Guide )

'Pacific Rim,' featuring showdowns between amphibious creatures and robots, has so many of these fights that it quickly gets to be too much.

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Kerry Hayes/Warner Bros. Pictures/AP
'Pacific Rim' stars Charlie Hunnam (l.) and Rinko Kikuchi (r.).
  • By Peter Rainer Film critic

I was thankful this summer was “Transformers”-free until I walked into, and staggered out of, “Pacific Rim.” Yes, director Guillermo del Toro is far more accomplished than Michael Bay, but that may not matter much when you’re being subjected to two-plus hours of robots (they’re called Jaegers here, which sounds like some kind of athletic footwear) battling Kaijus (who arise from the sea or the center of the earth or, more exactly, from the perfervid imaginations of ubergeeks). For too long, the Kaijus have been decimating millions of human lives.

Enter the Jaegers, robots controlled by two human pilots who are neurally linked by something called The Drift. But Kaijus have been adapting to the Jaegers – they get the drift of The Drift. In a fight to the finish, a troubled ex-pilot (Charlie Hunnam) and a spunky trainee (Rinku Kikuchi) team up to fend off the apocalypse.

The Kaijus make zombies look like wusses, so at least the fights in this film are battles royal. But overload sets in early, and it all turns into battle boring. Grade: C (Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence throughout, and brief language.)

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