Battle: Los Angeles (2011) PG-13
The first trailer for Battle: LA was quite atmospheric and was easy on the eyes. But as more and more trailers came out and word of mouth spread, I knew this film was going to be a disappointment. The cast is led by Aaron Eckhart (The Dark Knight, Meet Bill), Michelle Rodriguez (Avatar, The Fast and the Furious), Michael Pena (Crash, Shooter) and Bridget Moynahan (I, Robot, Lord of War). The rest of the cast is fairly inexperienced, and it shows because the acting is laughable at times. Director Jonathan Liebesman (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, Darkness Falls) put together some decent special effects throughout (with one glaring exception, the aliens), but it doesn't help the cause.You've heard and seen it all before. Earth has been attacked by alien life forms and it doesn't take long before they begin to take over our planet. Of all the hundreds of thousands of locations to choose from, the writer choose Los Angeles for the film to take place. That's awfully original. *Yawn* We follow a small group of Marines as they're sent into downtown LA to help rescue some civilians before the entire town is nuked.
The platoon is led by Lieutenant William Martinez (Ramon Rodriguez). Martinez is hesitant and basically incompetent. All the Marines try their best to stay away from Staff Sergeant Michael Nantz (Eckhart), because he's been known to put his Marines at risk. Cpl. Lockett's (Cory Hardrict) brother was killed in one of his missions, so there's some bad blood boiling.
They arrive downtown, and the place is infested and demolished. It isn't long before Martinez puts the whole crew in danger by backing them into a corner as they battle the goofy looking aliens. These aliens are part flesh, part robot. They're a crappy rip off of the infamous Predator. They escape, thanks to Nantz. They catch their breath at a police station where they run into some civilians and Technical Sergeant Elena Santos (Michelle Rodriguez). It's safe to say that these Marines are terrible shots. They also don't like to take much cover. Whoever trained them must of been blitzed and loaded.
The minutes pass by like hours as the laughable dialogue and the boring action sequences go on and on. Whoever wrote the script shouldn't quit his day job, because there are some ridiculous conversations that take place throughout. These aliens are so high-tech and so smart, but have a glaring weakness (which I won't give away). There's also a budding romance between Eckhart and Moynahan, which has no part in this non-stop action flick. I don't say this often but there's actually too much gun-fire and explosions. There's no room for character development and these characters are just not likable. We were this close to walking out of this film about 30 minutes in, it's that bad. And I understand that a lot people liked this film and will like it because of the action and the special effects, but it just wasn't working for me this time around. I've seen this all before and I've seen it done better.
The whole thing is implausible, but that comes at no surprise. Looking back, there wasn't a single entertaining moment from start to finish. The first twenty minutes explain absolutely nothing and the last twenty minutes are just a series of explosions. The camera jumps around and goes in and out of focus, over and over and over again. I thought I was watching a cheap mockumentary. Cloverfield was easier on the eyes, that's how bad it was. Listen filmmakers, contrary to what you may believe, I don't go to the theater to get a headache.
Look, if one of your main characters is Ne-Yo, then you got a problem on your hands. There have been a lot of similarities to video games, which is fair. But it's like watching somebody else playing a video game. If I can't control the game, then how is it fun? Please don't waste your time on this alien film that we've seen a hundred times before. Is it better than most alien films? Perhaps, but that doesn't mean you should spend eight bucks to see it. I just pray that we don't get an even worse sequel (which seems to be an inevitability these days). If you want to see a good recent alien film then check out Monsters, or watch District 9 again.
D
I thought it was pretty good. Reminded me of the video game "Resistance - Fall of Man" or "Gears of War". Critics will be critics, but I went into it expecting a bunch of action and that's what I got.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was annoying and it had me on the verge of falling asleep. Comparing a film to a video game is never a good thing to me. I get why you liked it, people like this type of stuff. I usually do as well, but it just had no heart and nothing new to offer.
ReplyDeleteI read your review. I thought it was bashed a little bit more than it should have been. The reason why I was more into this alien films than others, was more for the fact that it didn't drag us along with the whole, "Oh, are they friendly...do they want to communicate?" No, the aliens showed up and started fucking things up without any remorse whatsoever. Me, being a military man, I loved how the aliens resembled some of the same tactics the US military uses but more complex (a step up from us). So, I guess I looked at it from a different angle and I related it to what I know from the military. Most of the military films I see are a bunch of shit, because I find myself saying, "That's wrong...wrong again...stupid...yeah, that doesn't happen."
ReplyDeleteThe camaraderie was something I noticed most and it seemed a lot more geniuene. Granted, I very much dislike Michelle Rodriguez in almost every film I've seen her act in...everybody else did good. I do agree with the rapid camera movements....they needed to slow it down a bit. My eyes didn't know where to look at times and I found that quite annoying. If they could fix a few things, which I think we both mentioned, this film has a lot more potential.