Does size matter? It does to Guillermo del Toro, whose new film, “Pacific Rim,” pays homage to the humongous. So what if the script is feeble, the plot is perforated, and the characters are so flimsy that you wouldn’t risk blowing your nose on them? The point is the fight between the big guys. It’s like watching a pair of angry cathedrals going dome to dome. In one corner, Kaiju—scaly monsters that rise from a cleft in the ocean floor and lay waste to large conurbations. When they roar, which is most of the time, their open mouths give off a bright-blue glow, as if they had just breakfasted on a bowl of crunchy police cars. Ranged against them are the machines built by man and known as Jaegers: metallic giants, kitted out with missiles, superswords, nuclear reactors, corkscrews, bottle openers, and so forth. Each is driven by two pilots, one for each side of the device’s brain. For added focus, they are taught to meld their minds in a process known as “drifting.” Funny. That’s what I was doing for most of the movie, too.
This is one of those well-drilled films in which each protagonist comes supplied with a small, portable backstory. Thus, Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) lost his brother in an earlier standoff with the beasts. Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), his co-pilot, was orphaned in a similar attack. Then, there’s Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba), who should be a Pilgrim preacher from 1683; in fact, he is the commander of the Jaeger program, although he is prey to ominous nosebleeds, which can be a pain when you try to save the world without a handkerchief. Add a couple of quirky yet unamusing boffins, a snarling father-and-son duo, and some Chinese triplets, and you end up with a rich variety of people not to care about.
To be honest, after half an hour I was rooting for the Kaiju. In terms of temperament, they are unlikely to be mistaken for Roger Federer, but they’re inventive and well travelled, and their gaze and their gait remind you of the lanky faun—at once haunting and quizzical—in “Pan’s Labyrinth,” del Toro’s great film set in the wake of the Spanish Civil War. The rough rule appears to be that his Hispanic movies, such as “Cronos” and “The Devil’s Backbone,” remain troubling and tight, whereas, when he steps onto Hollywood’s patch—for “Mimic,” “Blade 2,” or the “Hellboy” franchise—the beauty of his images grows more fitful, and our astonishment tails off. No genre is wilder than horror, but none asks more insistently to be rooted in time and place, and to be keyed to touchable objects. Hence del Toro’s fondness for clockwork, and for mechanical thinglets that scuttle and click; the bugs in “Cronos,” locking onto human skin, were no bigger than a mouse. So what is he doing with a film about mobile mountains?
The clue to “Pacific Rim” is in the title. It represents not just an important location for the plot (the Kaiju have their eye on Hong Kong) but a courteous nod to the market where films such as this are intended—or designed—to thrive. Overseas sales account for an ever-swelling percentage of Hollywood’s box office, and it’s naïve to assume that forthcoming products will not reflect that cultural spread. That is why, in this instance, the stars are a mélange of British, Asian, Russian, and Australian, some speaking with American accents, some not. What’s more, even as the story hops between Alaska, San Francisco, Sydney, Vladivostok, and the Far East, you begin to realize that it could be happening anywhere, or nowhere. Small wonder that it ends up beneath the waves. It is possible to applaud “Pacific Rim” for the efficacy of its business model while deploring the tale that has been engendered—long, loud, dark, and very wet. You might as well watch the birth of an elephant.
The new film from Nicolas Winding Refn, “Only God Forgives,” is set in Bangkok. His previous work, the doomy “Drive,” took place in Los Angeles. In both cases, we get to share his peculiar vision of urban life. Here is no hive of human swarming; the major scenes contain only two or three people, their unlovely deeds echoing in a carefully calibrated void. Cities appeal to Refn not because they draw a crowd but because they infect the soul. Where else can crime be guaranteed to break out and suppurate?
From the start, “Only God Forgives” is suffused with a sticky red light, which brings with it the tint of a bordello and the shine of Hell. So often does it glaze the face of Julian (Ryan Gosling), our dolorous hero, that not until halfway through the movie do we see his complexion in daylight. Julian runs a kickboxing club and deals drugs for a living, although, as ever in Refn’s world, living is but a slow rehearsal for dying. One night, Julian’s brother, Billy (Tom Burke), rapes and murders a teen-age girl. Her father kills Billy, with the connivance of the police, and is, in turn, confronted and deprived of his right arm by an older cop, Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm), who carries a long, swishing blade for just such a purpose. The cycle of vengeance is already spinning; there are plenty more horrors to come, one involving a wokful of hot oil. If you think that sounds painful, meet Julian’s mom.
From the top: a tsunami of long blond hair, Jackie O. shades, pale-pink lipstick and tangerine nails, dialogue straight from the sewer, and a sideline in narcotics. Such is Crystal, newly landed in Bangkok to avenge the death of Billy. Told of his misdeeds, she replies, with airy nonchalance, “I’m sure he had his reasons.” The twist is that Crystal is played by Kristin Scott Thomas, the doyenne of Anglo-French panache, striding so far out of her comfort zone that the shock of recognizing her is greater (and more fun) than anything else in the film. “I’ll have the crab,” she says, at dinner with Julian. “And he’ll have the spicy chicken.”
The poor boy cowers and wilts, and you can’t blame him. He has to endure not just maternal put-downs but a merciless barrage from the fists and feet of Chang, who performs his savage acts with a high solemnity, as if they had some sacramental function. At one alarming moment, all the themes congeal. Crystal is cut, and Julian, like Doubting Thomas, slips a hand into her wound. Is Refn really tendering his grandly named film as a religious parable? If so, I’ll pass. Directors who dramatize intense violence tend to distinguish—or betray—themselves less in the filming of the mayhem than in the styling of the buildup, and, where Tarantino perfumes his air of suspense with a long, literate monologue, preferably delivered by Christoph Waltz, Refn uses a throb of patient dreaminess, as heavy as incense but impelled by little more than a craving for cool. However mystifying, or downright boring, you find the result, rest assured that the Refn faithful will swoon. Peace be with them.
There are good reasons to see “The Act of Killing,” a new documentary directed by Joshua Oppenheimer, but pleasure is not among them. A more likely response will include convulsive nausea and disbelief. The setting is Indonesia, where, in the mid-nineteen-sixties, a plan of mass murder was carried out against anyone suspected of being a Communist, and against the ethnic Chinese. At least half a million died. We see no footage from that time, nor do we meet survivors; rather, Oppenheimer interviews a number of perpetrators, who, far from fearing exposure or justice, are keen to discuss their deeds. And why not, when the purges are still celebrated by a current government minister and, even worse, by the smiling female presenter of an Indonesian chat show?
One of her guests is Anwar Congo, whom we follow throughout the film. Elderly, personable, and light on his feet, he shows us how to snuff out a life with a simple garrote of wire and a length of wood, and he recalls his use of a machete for decapitation. When you recall that a similar technique was choreographed in “Only God Forgives” for the sake of aesthetic suavity, Refn’s film becomes still harder to defend; and yet Oppenheimer’s work is itself subject to bizarre embellishment. He invites Congo and a fellow-killer, Adi Zulkadry, to restage—or reflect upon—their activities in any way they choose. We get musical sequences, and passages of grotesque cross-dressing; scenes in which torturers play their former selves, or, pasted with fake blood and flesh, their own victims; and the reconstruction of an assault on a village, in which local women and children are hired as extras and left in traumatized tears. This is difficult to watch, and, by the end, even the implacable Congo is affected, retching and groaning like an animal at the acknowledgment of his sins. Yet the project gave me pause. Although Oppenheimer has called it “a documentary of the imagination,” whatever that means, would a measure of investigation have spoiled it? We hear that Congo personally exterminated a thousand people. Does that figure stand up, and does it not matter more than his dawning remorse? There is no disputing that we are right at the heart of darkness, but around it is a larger body of evidence, which awaits another explorer. ♦