When it comes to going to battle against the enemy, instantclassics like Apocalypse Now and Saving Private Ryan comes to mind. But when you add a fictional battle that hasn’ttaken place, the movie Red Dawn comes to the list. However, by adding aliens, we think of Independence Day. So we get to a blunt title of a film called “Battle: Los Angeles,” will it be a movie that stand on its own or make it worth seeing a fight???
Directed by Jonathan Liebesman (Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning) takes a movie directly into the fight when aliens that appeared as meteors come to earth and attack every main city in the world, consuming our water resource and battling to take over earth. The film follows Staff Sergeant Michael Nantz played by Aaron Eckhart (The Dark Knight, Thank you for Smoking) who has been haunted by fallen soldiers under his command, and wanting to retire from the Marines. When taken into a situation where he has to fill in a leadership role, he finds himself and his unit trying to save civilians and stay alive, figure out what is hunting them, and how to kill them all at the same time, and yet in the whole world, they are the only ones who are capable of figuring this out… and find a way to defend our world.
You can tell a lot about a film on how it begins, and thisfilm started so unfocused and without any character development that there wasno connection with any of the characters in the film. It was like I was being forced to care aboutthese specific soldiers even though there were others dying left and right and nothing is ever focused. Another part that was really frustrating was the actual directing and shooting of thefilm. It felt like some took a home video camera and couldn’t get one good shot throughout the whole film. It was moving so much that in the middle of the film I felt so dizzy and I was sitting!
If the script wouldn’t have had so many cliches it would’ve made this film at least more interesting and enjoyable, but when you hear the line “MaybeI can help, I am a Veterinarian” in a intense scene, it was hard to become attached to the film.
What did work for me in the film was Michelle Rodriquez (Avatar, Girl Fight) character named Sergeant Elena Santos. Rodriquez did bring good chemistry between her character and who she had to interact with on scene.
This film was like Custer’s Last Stand Hollywood style with Aliens. Obviously if I was on the tourism board of California, this movie wouldn’t help bring people to their state…after it was blown up, chewed up and spit out. It was like playing Call of Duty: Black Ops with Mars Attack bundled into one. If you like just watching nothing but action sequences and war games with simple based plot, this movie is for you. However if you want more than what you can get out of a video game, then I wouldn’t recommend this film nor do I recommend it when it comes out to rent.
If you liked this type of film, I recommend:
Independence Day (1996)
Red Dawn (1984)
Cloverfield (2008)