Geekscape Movie Reviews: Battle LA
Independence Day meets Black Hawk Down in this Jonathan Liebesman (The Killing Room) directed science fiction/action film.
Battle LA stars Aaron Eckhart (Batman; The Dark Knight) as Staff Sgt. Nantz, a career military man who is bone weary of battle and ready to retire. Just as he is ready to return to civilian life a mysterious meteor shower off the coast of Los Angeles turns from human evacuation to full on attack by aliens. Nantz is pulled back in to lead a unit of marines under the newly graduated 2nd Lt. Martinez (Ramon Rodriguez).
The squad is sent into Santa Monica (California) to rescue civilians hiding out in a police station that has been surrounded by Alien’s determined to kill all humans so they can take our natural resources, particularly water. The squad makes it to the police station after taking fire and loosing a few squad mates to find only a handful of survivors.
A fight erupts outside and a marine is able to drag a barely alive alien into the station. Nantz feels like this may be their only opportunity to find a physical weakness. He’s assisted by a pretty veterinarian (Bridget Moynahan) who helps to tear open the alien in search of their vital organs. After some close calls the group moves out and the movie shifts from third gear right into over-drive.
“We’ve got to find a vital organ, this may be our only chance to see inside of one of these.”
The script is full of cliché characters that we have seen in many war films and the sub-genre science fiction/action films (Aliens) where you have the weak leader who has to rely on the “old dog” to make the tough decisions like “should we go right, or should we go left?” You’ve got the survivors who must be protected at all costs, and who get picked off one by one, except of course for the cute kids. Even so, this film still rocks with the realistic battle scenes, explosions, gun fights, suicide missions, and alien goo.
The movie plays like a first person shooter video game (Gears of War, Halo) with simple characters that build over time and mission objectives that move the story forward to a massive grand finale of marines working together to shoot-em up, blow-em up, and kick some Alien ass. With buildings crashing down, massive explosions and cool alien space craft flying about, the squad fights their way for about ½ of the entire movie keeping me thoroughly entertained despite some weak story lines and a slow first twenty minutes that was an unnecessary attempt to build more worthy character motivation as it’s an action film, not a drama.
Los Angeles under attack by Aliens
Alien science fiction films are all going to have some similar characteristics especially ones that have aliens attacking humans on Earth. Battle LA may be filled with some cliché story lines and characters, notably the “we can’t give up speech,” and dying for a higher cause, even so it does a really good job of telling a visual story in an exciting, action packed way which is good enough to forgive the former.
The film incorporates some realistic looking battle scenes that made my two-tour Iraq friend squirm in her seat and a well known film critic (can’t say his name) jump back and popcorn fly, -so much for being uber sophisticated.
Realistic military scenes deliver heart pounding action.
The camera was overly shaky at times with similar techniques to The Hurt Locker and the edits are sometimes a little to quick but by no means is it enough to ruin the film. The story is not as interesting as District 9 nor does it have the bloody brains getting pulled out of human bodies like in Skyline, but it has some heart pounding fight scenes, very cool shots of LA being torn apart, and was a welcome relief to watch after so many hum drum films that are out right now. It’s certainly not going down as the best science fiction film ever made, but it’s still pretty good.
For an entertaining hour and fifty-six minutes go see this film while it’s in the theater. It’ll be a good re-watch when it comes out on DVD but nothing brings a film like this to life better than the big screen and pounding sound system in a well built Movie Theater. One more thing – glad they didn’t make it in 3D as that would have been over-kill on this already visually striking film. Ooh-Rah!
Surprise, I bet you thought you killed me!
