Pacific Rim Uprising movie review

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PACIFIC RIM UPRISING

Director : Steven S. DeKnight
Cast : John Boyega, Scott Eastwood, Cailee Spaeny, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Burn Gorman, Jing Tian, Adria Arjona, Zhang Jin
Genre : Action, Sci-fi
Run Time : 1h 51m
Opens : 22 March 2018
Rating : PG13

Once more unto the breach, dear friends: a Pacific Rim sequel has arrived in the hopes of kick-starting a full-fledged franchise. Will this world of giant monsters (Kaiju) and robots (Jaegers) proceed apace with a Guillermo del Toro-shaped void at its centre?

It is ten years after the events of the first film. Jake Pentecost (John Boyega), the ne’er-do-well son of the late war hero, Jaeger pilot General Stacker Pentecost, wants nothing to do with the Pan Pacific Defence Corps. He flunked out of the academy years ago but is drawn back into the fray by his adoptive sister Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi).

Re-entering the Corps, Jake confronts his old rival Nate Lambert (Scott Eastwood). A new cadet arrives in the form of Amara Namani (Cailee Spaeny), a resourceful young scavenger who has built her own Jaeger, Scrapper. It’s been ten years since the Kaiju last attacked earth, but a new wave of invaders, armed with a secret weapon, is inbound. Liwen Shao (Jing Tian) of Shao Industries is developing a new generation of remotely-piloted Jaegers, earning the ire of the current crop of Jaeger pilots. She has employed Kaiju expert Dr Newt Geiszler (Charlie Day) to work on the drones. When a mysterious rogue Jaeger named Obsidian Fury attacks, Jake, Nate and the cadets must defend earth and get to the bottom of who or what is controlling the robot.

It’s understandable that based on the premise alone, some wrote off the original Pacific Rim as being a brainless and cacophonous enterprise akin to the Transformers films. Del Toro ensured that was not to be, delivering a well-made genre film bursting with textural detail, featuring archetypical but compelling characters, and paying tribute to Japanese Tokusatsu and anime without feeling slavish.

It’s too bad that Pacific Rim Uprising is the movie some feared the first would be. For every decision that del Toro would’ve made, Uprising bolts in the opposite direction.

Where Pacific Rim was set in a well-realised, lived-in sci-fi future, Uprising looks shiny and toy-like. The robots in the first film had lots of personality, but the ones here are more interchangeable. When the first movie fell back on formula, it was tempered with earnestness and sincerity. This feels like a more cynical studio product. While many of the characters in the first film were likeable, the characters here are largely annoying.

Replacing del Toro in the director’s chair is Steven S. DeKnight, who created the Spartacus TV series and who was the showrunner on the first season of Daredevil. DeKnight also co-wrote the script with Emily Carmichael, Kira Snyder and T.S. Nowlin. Uprising’s dialogue is often cringe-worthy, and while some jokes land, many do not. There are ham-fisted stabs at relevance by way of referencing outdated memes, and there isn’t enough charm to compensate for the familiarity of the plot and characters.

The world-ending stakes feel diminished, and the computer-generated robots seem to lack weight. Almost all the Jaeger vs. Kaiju battles in the first movie were in rain-soaked darkness, while the fights here take place in the daylight. While it gives us a better look at the larger-than-life combatants, it also exacerbates a sense of artifice. There are certain ideas at play that are very cool, and the throw down between Gipsy Avenger and Obsidian Fury in the Siberian tundra is fun to watch. However, none of the set-pieces are awe-inspiring the way those in the first film were.

This movie comes five years after its predecessor, and it feels a little early to tell a ‘next generation’ story. It doesn’t help that this follows many of the story beats from Independence Day: Resurgence. Despite its $150 million budget, the film sometimes feels like a direct-to-video sequel.

Unfortunately, the Jake Pentecost character is a big contributing factor. Boyega is charming and has excellent comic timing, but he is patently unconvincing as a badass action hero. Idris Elba has left gigantic shoes to fill, and while the movie is quick to remind us that Jake is not his father, it just makes us miss his father. This film sorely lacks gravitas, and Elba is essentially gravitas in human form.

The similarities between Cailee Spaeny’s Amara and Daisy Ridley’s Rey from Star Wars are impossible to miss. They’re both scrappy underdogs who are skilled mechanics and rise from obscurity to face insurmountable odds. While Ridley was endearing as Rey, Spaeny is merely whiny. The newcomer seems out of place in the big budget surroundings. She has plenty of projects lined up and is poised to hit the big time, but there’s room for improvement.

Eastwood is one of those generically handsome leading men Hollywood is trying a little too hard to make happen. There must be less clumsy ways to pander to China than this and films like Independence Day: Resurgence have. Jing Tian is stiff and far from a commanding presence as a Chinese tech mogul looking to revolutionise Jaegers. Jing has had roles in Legendary Pictures projects such as The Great Wall and Kong: Skull Island, but these attempts to kickstart a Hollywood career feel woefully inadequate.

Rinko Kikuchi, who was indelible as Mako Mori in the first film, has a drastically reduced part. Charlie Day wears on the nerves with his increased screen time, while Burn Gorman dutifully does what he can as the stock eccentric scientist.

Pacific Rim Uprising delivers popcorn spectacle and is never boring, but it strips away all the heart, sincerity and much of the technical mastery possessed by its predecessor. The influence of Chinese investors on the story is all too apparent and while kids might be entertained by the big fights, there isn’t enough to take one’s breath away. The film’s ending blatantly begs for a sequel, but there’s little here to inspire faith in wherever this series heads next.

RATING: 2 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

Ip Man 3 (叶问 3)

For F*** Magazine

Director : Wilson Yip

Cast : Donnie Yen, Zhang Jin, Lynn Hung, Patrick Tam, Mike Tyson, Karena Ng

Genre : Martial-Arts/Drama

Run Time : 1 hr 44 mins

Opens : 24 December 2015

Rating : PG13 (Some Violence)

After a five year leave of absence from the role, Donnie Yen is back as legendary martial artist Ip Man. It is 1950 and things are going well for Ip Man, who is respected throughout the land, continuing to run his Wing Chunacademy. Ip Chun, the son of Ip Man and his wife Cheung Wing-sing (Hung), gets into a schoolyard fight with Cheung Fong. It turns out that Cheung Fong is the son of rickshaw puller Cheung Tin-chi (Zhang), also a Wing Chun practitioner who is making money on the side in illegal fighting matches. Said matches are organised by American property developer Frank (Tyson), a crooked businessman who has the British Hong Kong police captain in his pocket. Local gangster Ma King-sang, working for Frank, terrorises the town, threatening the school that Ip Chun and Cheung Fong attend. As Ip Man’s disciples protect the innocent town folk, he must take on Frank and Cheung Tin-chi to prove his supremacy and safeguard his loved ones.

            Yen was initially reluctant to portray Ip Man a third time, saying of the second film “I believe it’s best to end something when it’s at perfection, and leave behind a good memory.” “Perfection” is a very strong word, Donnie. The sheer number of Ip Man-centric projects that cropped up after the success of the first film were also a factor in turning Yen off returning. Somehow, Ip Man 3 happened anyway, with Yen saying this will close out the series for good. This is a mess, with the feeling that a great deal was changed from what director Wilson Yip intended to shoot. The screenplay by Edmond Wong, Lai-yin Leung and Chan Tai-Li comes across as incredibly choppy and lacking in focus. Sure, the action choreography by Yen, Yuen Shun-Yee and Yuen Woo-Ping is expectedly splendid, but it ultimately needs to be in service of a solid story, which just isn’t the case here.

The initial announcements that Mike Tyson had signed on to play the villain and that Bruce Lee would be resurrected via digital trickery both reeked of unabashed gimmickry. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed and Lee is played instead by Danny Chan, who does a fun, if over-the-top impression of the pioneering action star. Chan’s movements are appropriately swift, though his attempt at Lee’s signature cocky grin borders on caricature. Chan previously played Lee in the 2008 biographical TV series The Legend of Bruce Lee. Chan bears an uncanny resemblance to Lee and this reviewer is relieved that this is what we got instead of a disconcerting floating CGI head. While it was originally suggested that director Yip’s objective was for Ip Man 3 to follow the master-disciple relationship between Ip Man and Lee, that’s more a B-plot than anything else.

Perhaps even more surprisingly, Tyson is in very little of the film and his is a C-plot. Those looking forward to a showdown along the lines of Rocky vs. Ivan Drago in Rocky IV will come away sorely disappointed. Ip Man doesn’t even meet Frank until more than an hour into the film. Tyson is no actor and looks extremely out of place in Ip Man 3, unable to beat the snatches of Cantonese dialogue he is given into submission. Of course, it wouldn’t be an Ip Man film without a serving of anti-Western sentiment, with a supercilious British police captain also showing up. At one point, Kent Cheng’s Sgt. Po says the line “the two foreign devils are in cahoots!” with nary a sense of irony.

Yen has considerable experience playing Ip Man and his is often considered the definitive portrayal of the master. Ip Man is a combination warrior-sage-saint with no shortcomings to speak of and therefore not terribly interesting, because the filmmakers are too preoccupied with respecting his status to take any risks with the characterisation. Any and all scenes involving Ip Man’s wife Cheung Wing-sing and his son Ip Chun are treacly and cloying. Ip Man also had two sons in real life, but only one shows up. The real-life Ip Chun, now 91, served as the martial arts consultant on this film, as with the two earlier instalments. It is a massive missed opportunity not to have the actual Ip Chun interact with the child version of him in the film in a cameo. Like Yen, Zhang Jin actually is an accomplished martial artist and as such genre aficionados should enjoy seeing the two duke it out. There is a degree of complexity to Zhang’s character, who is an antagonist but not an out-and-out villain, which is appreciated in a film lacking in subtlety.

Audiences have waited a while for the conclusion to Yen’s Ip Mantrilogy and this is far from a truly satisfying final chapter. The stunt casting of Tyson isn’t exploited to its full potential and Ip Man taking Bruce Lee under his wing (chun), something which these films have been building up to, is treated like a side-plot. There are superbly-staged kungfu skirmishes aplenty, but it is difficult to recommend the film solely on that basis. Should’ve left it at two, Donnie.

Summary: Dynamic fights cannot rescue this scattershot threequel which closes out the Ip Man trilogy on an underwhelming note.

RATING: 2 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong 

SPL 2: A Time For Consequences (杀破狼II)

For F*** Magazine

Director : Soi Cheang

Cast : Tony Jaa, Louis Koo, Wu Jing, Simon Yam, Zhang Jin, Philip Keung, Ken Lo

Genre : Action/Thriller

Run Time : 120 mins

Opens : 2 July 2015

Rating : NC-16 (Violence and Drug Use)

Tony Jaa has no more time for elephants, only a time for consequences in this Hong Kong-Thai action thriller. Jaa plays Chai, a prison guard whose young daughter Sa is battling leukaemia. An unlikely new prisoner lands in the jail where Chai works: Hong Kong undercover cop Kit (Wu), who has had his cover blown while on the trail of organ trafficking ring kingpin Mr. Hung (Koo). Mr. Hung, himself terminally ill, is in Thailand for a heart transplant to save his life, forcing his younger brother (Jun Kung) to be the donor. Kit’s supervisor and uncle Wah (Yam) tracks his nephew down and travels to Thailand to retrieve him. It turns out that Kit is the only bone marrow match for Sa, so Kit and Chai must become unlikely partners to save their own lives and the life of little Sa as fists and bullets fly.

            SPL 2 is rather confusingly named – it is almost completely unrelated to the 2005 film SPL, starring Donnie Yen and Sammo Hung, even though both Simon Yam and Wu Jing were in the earlier movie too. This is a “spiritual sequel”, i.e. some other script with the “SPL” name slapped onto it. The film’s grammatically-impaired English tagline is “Real action. Real fight.” There are fights aplenty and action director Li Chung Chi choreographs some intense battles, including a shootout at a ferry terminal and a stylish climactic showdown in a pristine high-end medical facility. It is also a boon that Tony Jaa, Wu Jing and Zhang Jin are all highly skilled martial artists in their own right and are able to perform their own fights. Those looking purely for “real fight”, however, will probably come away slightly disappointed at the usage of stylised wirework for several of the sequences.

            While it contains enough fisticuffs to satiate action junkies, SPL 2 is burdened with an unexpectedly convoluted, labyrinth story. A key plot device is that of a terminally ill little girl and the search for a bone marrow donor – this seems more at home in a soap opera than in a martial arts flick. The plot has to straddle both Hong Kong and Thailand and this is often done quite clumsily. It seems as if screenwriter Jill Leung Lai-yin was tasked with finding a way to work Jaa into the story and ended up spinning a far knottier yarn that was needed. This is a film in which the two protagonists do not speak the same language, and have to communicate via smart phone translator app. If that doesn’t drive a wedge in the buddy chemistry, we have no idea what will.

            Tony Jaa is very likeable as an action hero and is experiencing something of a career resurgence after completing his stint as a Buddhist monk, making inroads into Hollywood with Fast and Furious 7 and the Dolph Lundgren-starrer Skin Trade. He has the earnestness and intensity down pat but of course, it’s his impressive Muay Thai-trained athleticism that makes more of an impact than anything else. Wu Jing comes from a different martial arts training background and they do complement each other, even though their partnership never feels complete because of the invisible cultural/language barrier that’s always there. Rocking a waistcoat, Zhang Jin is slick and dangerous as the prison warden and main henchman to Mr. Hung. Louis Koo puts aside his usual handsome, healthy appearance as the sickly master criminal; his portrayal sinister but never wholly threatening.

            Instead of having a little fun and being truly inventive with the action sequences, SPL 2 takes itself far too seriously – the faux-portentous subtitle “A Time for Consequences” should have been indication enough. Instead of being gritty and hard-hitting, the film is often frustratingly maudlin, melodramatic and hard to follow. The cliché use of very recognisable pieces of classical music in an attempt to elicit pathos, including Mozart’s Requiem and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (Summer), further mires the film in unintentional hilarity. The filmmakers clearly had access to the resources and talent to make a truly entertaining, breath-taking martial arts extravaganza, but have instead tangled themselves up in too much plot.

Summary: Even though it contains a fair amount of neatly-choreographed action, SPL 2 is slow, difficult to follow and fails to deliver a cohesive team-up between Thai action star Tony Jaa and Hong Kong action star Wu Jing.

RATING: 2 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong