10 (Probably Failed) Attempts At A Measured Response To Pacific Rim

6. Somebody Give This Man His Godd**n Shoe!

la_ca_0621_pacific_rim The only person cooler than Hannibal Chau is his tailor. Ron Perlman is awesome in Pacific Rim - in fact, he's awesome in everything he does. If he's in a movie, I'll watch it... which has taken me down some dark, painful roads, might I add. The fact that he's playing Hannibal Chau - and that a Hong Kong dealer in kaiju body parts named Hannibal Chau could be played by him - should add a lot of character and quirk to Pacific Rim, which it does... just not as much as you'd think. It all sounds great on paper. A whole black market has sprung up around the kaiju remains - and apparently they use the whole kaiju, if you know what I mean. But Hannibal Chau is never as funny or dangerous or even quirky as he should be. When Perlman gets swallowed up by a baby kaiju, I didn't really care. And I should care when one of the film's most memorable characters gets taken out the story - especially if he's played Ron Perlman. But del Toro and co-writer Travis Beacham rarely stick the landing when it comes funny, engaging characters. Hannibal Chau is the most glaring example of the script not being honed into something memorable.
Contributor
Contributor

Jeremy Wickett was raised from an early age in one of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma's classier opium dens. A graduate of The University of Oklahoma, he now resides in Phoenix, Arizona - where the desert heat is oppressive enough to make him hallucinate that he's a character in Star Wars. And of course he can speak Bocce - it's like a second language to him. His so-called musings can be found here: http://geekemporium.blogspot.com/