Re: BATTLE: LOS ANGELES(Film 2011) Grade/Discuss
Battle: Los Angeles
Rated: PG-13
My Grade: B-
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Imagine slamming your head into a stainless-steel cabinet for two-hours while someone yells at you while blasting loud music. That's
pretty much what this movie is but, somehow, it works out to be pretty fun.
Much of this movie is just a lot of noisy, "in the trenches" style battle scenes of bombs going off and people yelling incomprehensible stuff at each other the rest of it is our characters muttering stuff to one another almost in unintelligible voices. None of the secondary characters are very memorable or distinguishable while in the heavy military gear, the only real memorable characters come from Aaron Eckhart who does a great job, Michele Rodriguez, an Indian civilian and simply for a distinguishing trait a horn-rimmed glasses soldier. We're introduced to other characters who have their moments but, really, hardly any of it means anything over the long run. A small portion of this movie is spent setting these various people up but once they're set-up their little side-plots are pretty much forgotten. The horn-rimmed glasses guy is getting married, poor-man's Matt Damon is suffering from PTSD, the squad's leader is school-trained but has no real-world experience and then we have our hero in Eckhart who's leaving the Marines for civilian life due to survivor's guilt from a previous battle.
He gets his paper work and agrees to give some Marines one last quick training exercise when suddenly he's called into active duty to do "one last mission" before his release goes through. It seems that aliens are landing off the coast of major world series in what's disguised as a meteor shower, our troops are asked to go into a section of San Diego to rescue some civilians in a hospital before the area is carpet-bombed as it's serving -apparently- as the aliens' base of operations. Eckhart's character seems to have a "reputation" now of being someone who saves his own ass at the cost of those under him so the our various soldiers are none to happy to have him second in command of their squad charged with this mission.
Along the way they run into another group of soldiers this one including Michele Rodriguez who we find out was sent in to learn about the aliens' technology/battle strategies. While it's at first assumed the aliens have no air game that hope is soon erased. The aliens we never get a
clear look at but an impromptu alien autopsy reveals them to be a biological entity with a vulnerable spot in their chest not too far away from where the human heart is. (Which you'd think they'd be aiming for anyway, but I digress.) But overall the aliens appear to be your typical movie Insectoid/Reptilian style alien seen in every other movie for the last 30 years.
I know I'm ragging on this movie a lot as it has a
lot of flaws. The characters are hard if not impossible to care about, it seems to want a "Saving Private Ryan" type story with these soldiers sent in to save a handful of civilians trapped in a San Diego hospital but given the direness of the situation it strikes me as unlikely that such an expedition would've been risked in the middle of a
very active battle and a destination in the heart of enemy territory. And, of course, our heroes find a way to defeat the aliens who've mastered intersolar travel but haven't mastered bullet-proof vests, non-projectile weapons, or any kind of shielding (physical or electrical) for their vehicles. Our military chaps, on the other hand, go into battle with large powerful aliens with strong ground vehicles without packing much in the way of heavy firepower like bazookas or seriously high-caliber weaponry.
Action scenes are fun, the "drama" and "plot" scenes are meh as there's not a whole lot of them and not much development to care about the characters but Eckhart turns in a good performance here and the person above who said he seemed "Archer-ian" in his look and mannerisms? I disagree. Eckhart is a
lot less stiff than Bakula was in Enterprise.
Otherwise the comparison is valid.
It's a fun switch your brain off, see it once and enjoy it sort of movie as the effects and battles in it are very good and well filmed but beyond that the movie has not much to offer, but what I did think during this movie is that it's what "Skyline" should have been. In fact, it seems like it's a lateral-quel to Skyline as it feels like it what was going on in Skyline beyond that stupid damn penthouse.
Fun movie, not sure I'd say it's one to rush out and see, the effects might be worth seeing in theaters as they're quite well done in close to "photo-realistic" as possible but watching this in a few months on rental/Netflix would work too. Wouldn't say it's a "must own" type of movie.
Worth seeing once if you like some pretty hard-core action.
There are a heck of a lot more water in much more easily accessible places in the solar system. Surely they have ice-melting technology? 
