By Renee’ Collins
Rating: 2.5 (Out of 5 Reels)
I went into this film expecting a testosterone festival and I got exactly what I expected. As a war between humankind and monstrous sea creatures wages on, a former pilot and a trainee are paired up to drive a seemingly obsolete special weapon in a desperate effort to save the world from the apocalypse (IMDB).
One of the characters that stood out to me was Stacker portrayed by Idris Elba as the person in charge of the entire operation trying to fight off the alien attack because he seemed to have depth and was the most convincing and I look forward to more of his work in the future. I hate to say it but the only other character who stood out was a cameo by Ron Perlman as Hannibal Chau a shady alien organ dealer. I am guessing Perlman had the cameo because of his previous work with director Guillermo del Toro in the Hell Boy series. Other than that I felt this film was flat and had no real depth especially Rinko Kikuchi because I thought her performance was flat. During a flashback scene of Mako’s traumatic childhood I found the young actor’s portrayal leaps and bounds ahead of her grown up counterpart.
No expense was spared in the special 3D effects of this film and they were somewhat entertaining for the most part. Unfortunately, they did not pay too much attention to the writing and giving depth to the main characters. We seemed to only get snippets of background information that tried to explain who and what each character was but not enough to engage me. I know the kids will absolutely love this over the top robot versus alien creature fight fest. For me, I found it to be formulaic and a bit boring because of the obnoxious in your face effects and over acting. I would definitely not pay full price for this film and see no reason to see it in 3D. However, kids will absolutely love this film.