Torn - decently disappointing / disappointingly decent

Rating: Null/10 (21 May 2014)

A mixed baggage, decidedly. Forget about the casting, esp. when there's not much meat there to go around. Everyone around me was criticizing Olsen, Cranston, Watanabe, Strathairn and Binoche for slumming it, but hey, we all need our paychecks. The less said about Taylor-Johnson and Hawkins (and the child actors inhabiting this one), the better.
I myself was curious about how they would try to better the sheer awesomeness that pervaded each and every sequence in 'Pacific Rim'. Well, they didn't. They did do something different, by ensuring that the monster-on-monster action was wholly filmed from a human perspective, and that Gojira himself was more a savior, a figurehead of tragedy, a la King Kong, but this one doesn't have the Beauty and the Beast motif going for it that puts us firmly in the protagonists' corner.
In terms of scale, this one has it in spades. In terms of plot though, its all meh.
There are quite a few action sequences that warrant a mention, and even perhaps a repeat viewing: 1. The train transport sequence, 2. The passenger train sequence, in spite of it being awfully short, 3. The final monster-on-monster action, once again, dramatically short, for a movie that has a 2-hour runtime.
The CGI is fantastic, with not one frame looking out of sorts. No mean achievement, that.
However, it saddened me to note that the reviled director responsible for the atrocity that was the 1998 version, is responsible for works that have way better characterization like (even) 2012, The day after tomorrow, Independence day et al. Incredibly ironic. The big mistake was in following 1 family. Emmerich gave us multiple perspectives in ID, and though that was one dumb B-flick, we'd all find someone to root for, and stuck with them all the way (even friggin' Randy Quaid).
The dumbness. Oh, the plot that serves nothing more than make the movie plod on, clod by clod.......it pervades most frames, right from the time-lines to the sequences set within the quarantine region (floppy diskettes? really?). After a time, I gave up caring. (To be fair, I didn't put my thinking hat on while watching, but typing this, I'm mostly thinking "huh! huh? HUH????".)
Unexpected from someone with the pedigree that Gareth Edwards has. I really dug his work in 'Monsters', and feel that he should get back to low budget, Indie filmmaking. This one needed Del Toro.
And the 3D? An absolute waste. People should re-watch 'Avatar' and 'Pacific Rim', make notes, and then at least try to ape those well-worn works on how 3D would make your frames come to life. Given the choice, I'd prefer watching Pacific Rim once again over this, but its not bad for a 1-time watch in 2D. And believe me, I wanted to like this one.