6. Indifferent Performances
The performances really run the gamut here; Idris Elba and Rinko Kikuchi (who nevertheless clearly struggles to speak English) unquestionably get the meatiest material of show, and Charlie Hunnam does as well as he possibly can with his relatively thin protagonist shtick, but nobody really gets much of substance to work with, and the result is a series of wonky performances that just don't seem particularly passionate or self-assured. The most troublesome for me is Charlie Day's Geizler; his high-strung vocal register just proves irritating and makes the goofy humour all that more difficult to swallow, and it's not until the film is almost over that he seems to really settle into the role at all. As for most of the other characters, they adhere to pretty strict militaristic stereotypes, and don't get much to do either; there's the cliched Russian Jaeger pilots, and Robert Kazinsky's Chuck Hansen is basically a generic douchebag jock-type villain who dislikes Becket, though of course, eventually comes around to his way of thinking.