Pacific Rim
Warner Bros. Pictures | Release Date: July 12, 2013 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
65
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 48 Critic Reviews
Positive:
32
Mixed:
12
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzJul 12, 2013
If I were nine years old, I would see the monsters-versus-robots adventure Pacific Rim 50 times. Because I'm in my forties and have two kids and two jobs, I'll have to be content with seeing it a couple more times in theaters and re-watching it on video. Read full review
100
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallJul 10, 2013
Pacific Rim gives big, dumb and loud an exemplary name and summer audiences something to cheer. Read full review
100
New York PostLou LumenickJul 10, 2013
There’s no shortage of brains, brawn, eye candy, wit and even some poetry in this epic battle between massive lizard-like monsters and 25-story-high robots operated by humans. Read full review
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinJul 8, 2013
At first, watching Pacific Rim feels like rediscovering a favourite childhood cartoon – but del Toro has flooded the project with such affection and artistry that, rather than smiling nostalgically, you find yourself enchanted all over again. Read full review
90
SalonAndrew O'HehirJul 11, 2013
This is a noisy, chaotic, technology-crazed 21st-century action film, but also one made with tremendous excitement, vigor and heart, along with a myriad of wonderful details. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranJul 10, 2013
Guillermo del Toro is more than a filmmaker, he's a fantasy visionary with an outsized imagination and a fanatical specificity, a creator of out-of-this world universes carefully conceived down to the smallest detail. His particular gifts and passions are on display in the long-awaited Pacific Rim and the results are spectacular. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrJul 10, 2013
Pacific Rim is, hands down, the blockbuster event of the summer — a titanic sci-fi action fantasy that has been invested, against all expectations, with a heart, a brain, and something approximating a soul. Read full review
80
Time OutKeith UhlichJul 9, 2013
Every monster-movie archetype is here, from nerdy scientists (Charlie Day and Burn Gorman) to hard-stare leaders (Idris Elba) with a penchant for 11th-hour inspirational speeches. (Watching the former Stringer Bell bellow about “canceling the apocalypse!” is one of those great, giddy pleasures you didn’t know you needed.) Read full review
80
Total FilmMatthew LeylandJul 8, 2013
A huge, CGI-heavy popcorner that still feels personal. Come for the epic monster-on-mecha showdowns, stay for the likeable humans. Read full review
80
Film.comJordan HoffmanJul 8, 2013
It is one of the better dumbass sci-fi action movies to come down the pike in quite some time. Read full review
80
Village VoiceStephanie ZacharekJul 5, 2013
Pacific Rim is big and dumb in a smart way. Read full review
75
NPRIan BuckwalterJul 12, 2013
Director Guillermo del Toro knows that the charm in the clash of scale - or armor-plated titans isn't necessarily tied to the low budgets and laughable production design of those guilty-pleasure TV shows. And with Pacific Rim, he cracks the code. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyJul 11, 2013
Of all this year’s loud, over-long summer action movies that, in various ways, simulate the experience of having a tin bucket placed over your head and being struck repeatedly with a stick, it must be said that Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim is by far the most entertaining. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter TraversJul 11, 2013
What pulls us over the rough spots is the mind meld between del Toro the artist and the child inside him. They both want to astonish us. Geeks everywhere, salute. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaJul 11, 2013
Pacific Rim shares much with the Mexican filmmaker's "Hellboy" franchise - jokey and comic book-y, full of muscular tableaus with huge squads of people coming and going (and running for their lives). Read full review
75
Portland OregonianMarc MohanJul 11, 2013
Idris Elba exudes the requisite militaristic authority as Raleigh's commanding officer, and Rinko Kikuchi is his determined partner in mecha mayhem. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliJul 11, 2013
There's not a single original moment to be found in Pacific Rim's 130-minute running time, but that doesn't much matter because the familiar beats are conveyed with maximum expertise intended to provide a visceral experience. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsJul 11, 2013
It's closer to the hammering "Transformers" aesthetic than expected. Yet the weirdness around the edges saves it from impersonality. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Jul 10, 2013
Yet for all its expensive grandeur, almost too epic even for the vast canvases of IMAX, Pacific Rim is unmistakably a Del Toro creation. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperJul 10, 2013
It is a ridiculously entertaining (and often just plain ridiculous) monster-robot movie that plays like a gigantic version of that “Rock ’Em, Sock ’Em Robots” game from the 1960s, combined with the cheesy wonderfulness (or should it be wonderful cheesiness?) of black-and-white Japanese monster movies from the 1950s. Read full review
70
SlateDana StevensJul 11, 2013
Coming out of Pacific Rim I felt energized rather than enervated, excited to describe certain nifty details of the film’s wacked-out imaginary world to friends, maybe even ready to … sit through certain parts again? Read full review
70
The New York TimesA.O. ScottJul 11, 2013
Pacific Rim, with its carefree blend of silliness and solemnity, is clearly the product of an ingenious and playful pop sensibility. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzJul 10, 2013
It’s not the best movie of the summer, not by a long shot, but if there’s such a thing as smarter dumb fun, this is probably it. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyJul 8, 2013
To kill time between action set-pieces, del Toro has done an above-average job of avoiding tedium via some flavorsome casting, passably interesting plot contrivances and, above all, by maintaining strong forward momentum. Unlike so many similar crash-bang action spectaculars, this one feels lean and muscular rather than bloated or padded; the combat is almost always coherent and dramatically pointed rather than just splashed on the screen for its own sake. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenJul 10, 2013
There’s no denying Pacific Rim is the best film of its kind. It remains to be seen whether the film’s epic clawing and clanking satisfies a pent-up demand equal to its ambitions. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyJul 10, 2013
In a sense, Pacific Rim winds up being not enough of a Guillermo del Toro movie. It's more like a mash-up of "Real Steel" and the "Transformers" pictures. Which is a shame, because the idea is undeniably cool. Read full review
67
IndieWireEric KohnJul 8, 2013
Too in love with itself to ever totally go off the rails, Pacific Rim doesn't qualify as the first full-on dud of del Toro's career, but it's hard not to get the sense that something's missing. Read full review
63
Washington PostAnn HornadayJul 11, 2013
A big, lumbering, rock ’em, sock ’em mash-up of metallic heft and hyperbole, a noisy, overproduced disaster flick that sucks its characters and the audience down a vortex of garish visual effects and risibly cartoonish action. And you know what? It’s not bad! Read full review
63
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezJul 11, 2013
It’s the cinematic equivalent of a kid playing with his toys and smashing action figures together, except del Toro does it with more grace and imagination than most. There are long sequences in this movie that merit that most overused of terms, “awesome.” Read full review
63
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsJul 11, 2013
The movie is an eyeful, especially in 3-D, but even with humans at the helms of the machines, it’s a hollow exercise in homage. Read full review
63
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreJul 10, 2013
Del Toro’s robots have weight and mass, and their epic, Hong Kong-smashing fights with the four and six-legged, clawed and horned monsters are visually coherent, unlike the messy blur of the “Transformers” movies. There’s a light, humorous feel to “Pacific Rim” because the science is silly and logic takes a flying leap. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineEd GonzalezJul 8, 2013
Guillermo del Toro doesn't rise above the obligations of staging a film of this sort as a multi-level video game, a stylish but programmatic ride toward an inevitable final boss battle. Read full review
60
The DissolveMike D'AngeloJul 11, 2013
Pacific Rim never amounts to more than the sum of its setpieces, but it delivers on the promise of its premise. Read full review
60
Time Out LondonTom HuddlestonJul 10, 2013
If Del Toro is pitching for an audience of 12-year-old boys (and we do mean boys: this is old-school macho), he’s done a bang-up job. Still, there are times when Pacific Rim could be the work of any jobbing Hollywood director – the warmth and idiosyncracy that characterises Del Toro’s finest work, from Pan’s Labyrinth to Hellboy 2, is absent. Read full review
60
The GuardianAndrew PulverJul 8, 2013
Pacific Rim's wafer-thin psychodrama and plot-generator dialogue provides little for the human component to get their teeth into. Read full review
60
EmpireIan NathanJul 8, 2013
Del Toro is giving scope to a boyhood lust for mayhem, the multi-million-dollar equivalent of kicking over sandcastles and torturing insects. There is something infectiously juvenile in that. Read full review
50
The New YorkerAnthony LaneJul 15, 2013
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. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerJul 12, 2013
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. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinJul 12, 2013
Pacific Rim made me marvel at the technology of movies, but never the magic of them. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternJul 11, 2013
"Could be worse" isn't exactly a ringing endorsement of Pacific Rim, but my head is still ringing, and hurting, from long stretches of this aliens vs. robots extravaganza that are no better than the worst brain-pounders of the genre. Read full review
50
TimeRichard CorlissJul 11, 2013
You get 45 minutes of awesome encased in 90 minutes of yawnsome. Read full review
50
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanJul 11, 2013
All performances remain irrelevant in the face of such expensive, explosive combat and destruction, and there the film excels: You will feel blown back into your seat, starting 40 seconds into the story. Read full review
42
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezJul 10, 2013
If your basic movie needs demand a little bit more -- logical premises; interesting, marginally original characters; dialogue that doesn’t reek of throaty, aspirational monologue after monologue -- Pacific Rim will leave you feeling hollow and wanting. Read full review
40
VarietyJustin ChangJul 8, 2013
Although assembled with consummate care and obsessive attention to visual detail, Pacific Rim manages only fitful engagement and little in the way of real wonderment, suspense or terror. Read full review
38
USA TodayClaudia PuigJul 11, 2013
The story's appeal is lost in all the fights between the monsters and robots. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleJul 11, 2013
If this is the best we can do in terms of movies - if something like this can speak to the soul of audiences - maybe we should just turn over the cameras and the equipment to the alien dinosaurs and see what they come up with. Read full review
25
ObserverRex ReedJul 9, 2013
An hour and 20 minutes into this two-hour-and-11-minute endurance test, a hungry Kaiju attacks the city of Hong Kong and eats the neon signs of every Cantonese restaurant in Victoria Harbor. It’s sort of worth waiting around for. Read full review
20
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierJul 11, 2013
Laudable as its world-building is, the film drags not just in its interminable middle hour, but also during the redundant monster-on-mechawarrior smackdowns. Read full review
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