It first glance, you might be confusing this with the better known, 2013 Hollywood produced Pacific Rim and that would be exactly what The Asylum, makers of movies labeled as "mockbusters", are hoping to cash in on. There is no coincidence that both films have "Rim" in the title, with giant, human controlled robots (or mecha, for you other folks) battling monsters (kaiju for you same folks). And that's where the similarities pretty much come to an end.
One had a budget of around $190 million and it shows, the other might have crossed the $500,000.00 line....maybe, after parking and meals.
Well written, with amazing special effects and directed by Guillermo Del Toro, Pacific Rim feels very much like an homage piece to both mecha (think along the lines of Michael Bay’s Transformers with people inside) and kaiju (Godzilla and all those other "what the heck are those things?" oversized monsters) movies.
Atlantic Rim felt like it was a hastily written first draft, all the scenes were shot in one take and heavily used Adobe After Effects for everything else. Directed by Jared Cohn, it's kinda hard to gauge where they were trying to go with this movie, be serious or make fun of themselves? It was sad to see Graham Greene in this film, kinda like an indicator he had fallen very far from grace (I first saw him many years ago on an episode of North of 60, a long running Canadian TV series and many movies afterwards).
Having said all of that, I am a sucker for "bad movies" and I watched Atlantic Rim. Although I wouldn't chalk the experience up as "OMG, I will never get that time back in my life!", but more like "Been there, done that and moving on", with a bit of a frown.
So, what does this have to do with a tank or combat vehicle? While I was watching, I could have nearly blinked and missed it all together. For a grand total of two seconds, this is what I saw....
Yeah, 47 minutes into the movie just to see that clip....yeah, another 78 to go for the end of the credits.
However, the vehicle itself is a Rheinmetall Leopard 2A4M CAN, in service the Canadian Army. 80 2A4's were purchased as surplus from the Royal Netherlands Army in 2007, of which 20 were later sent to Krauss-Maffei Wegmann of Germany and upgraded to 2A4M CAN standard by 2009. Five of these upgraded models would be deployed to Afghanistan.
The Leopard 2A4M is powered by a MTU MB-837 Ka501 turbocharged diesel engine, producing 1,500 horsepower and can reach a maximum road speed of 72km/h (55 km/h off-road), with a range of 550 kilometers. Primarily armed with a Rheinmetall 120 mm/L44 smoothbore gun, with maximum of 42 rounds carried onboard and a secondary armament of two C6 7.62 mm machine guns.
But, there was something odd with the scene itself. First, the movie was shot in Pensacola, Florida, so why would it show a Canadian tank (the Maple Leaf on the side of the turret kinda gives that away)? Was it stock footage from somewhere (trust me, I have been looking high and low for this) or was it CGI?
After conferring with an old "war buddy", the consensus was this was real footage of a Leo rolling through a parking lot....somewhere.
So, if you want to watch Atlantic Rim for footage of the Leopard 2, I just saved you a whole lot of time by posting an animated gif of the entire scene. If you really want to watch a bad movie that pales in comparison to the Hollywood blockbuster original, then....enjoy?
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