Certificate: 12A
Running time: 116 mins
Director: Jonathan
Liebesman
Starring: Aaron
Eckhart, Michelle Rodriguez, Bridget Moynahan
Genre: Action, Sci-Fi
Country: USA
We hate to say I told you so,
Jack Bauer was no sooner off the television when aliens decided they were going
to come down and take Los Angeles (and the world) for themselves. With invasions popping up at
various coastline points across the globe it’s up to the military of the world to stop
them. Up first, the United States Marine
Corp go head-to-head on the streets of Santa
Monica with first contact.
There are fewer things I like better than genre mash-ups, largely
because they’re either incredibly entertaining or incredibly bad. The middle ground is little more than no
man’s land for the corpses of a thousand Michael Bay
offerings. Battle: Los Angeles is somewhere between District 13 and Black Hawk
Down and as such is right up my street.
The film’s storyline is quite simple, simple enough to read off a
billboard on the side of a bus travelling at speed. This can either be to the film maker’s credit
or detriment at times, but it seems to work (for the most part) for B:LA.
The alien invasion movie is definitely one of life’s bigger picture narratives, rarely will
there be a movie that carries an alien invasion and yet overshadow it with the
touching tell of a couple mid-divorce.
Such things are difficult to pull off and require a delicate touch that
genre directors tend not to have. What
this movie has, is focus. One storyline,
stay focused and don’t get distracted…only it does. And this is where the detriment comes
in. Yes, the narrative is
simple…simplistic even (there is a difference) and as such the character’s
painted in to drive the narrative are two dimensional, unchallenging and on
occasion downright repetitive. They are
a mish-mash of characters we have seen before.
The experienced combat soldier who lost all of his men, the officer
school Lieutenant who didn't earn his stripes and is as green as he is frightened, the grieving brother
from a large military family, the civilian parent…these are common genre
devices, rarely does one movie gather them all together like some sort of
stereotypical Avengers, yet Battle: Los Angeles has not only amassed
them all but feels confident you’ve never heard their touching story
before. We don’t care. We have, we’ve heard it before…many…many
times and not to sound cold but it’s got a little boring. Fortunately these cack-handed broad stroke
attempts at characterisation don’t last long, though when they’re upon us the
dialogue is laughable, and before long we’re back to the most basic of human
instincts and the cornerstone of our movies narrative, survival.
Aaron Eckhart (The Dark Knight)
as Staff Sergeant Nantz is a very good piece of casting. He’s got a strong jaw, a hardened presence and a
quiet pained way about him that sells the “grieving combative quietly suffering
through survivors guilt”. It’s such a
shame his best small moments had to be ruined by poorly constructed dialogue
and a score designed to hammer home every last ounce of stolen emotion. Yet, all in all he carries this hulk of a
movie well and could well be an action hero for the next generation now that Bruce
(Willis) has proved you can have too much of a good thing with A Good Day To Die Hard not to mention his general old-man right wing grumpiness. Michelle Rodriguez is cast to give the film a
rounded gender feel as the tough talking, hard hitting, and expert shot Air
Force pilot Elena Santos. But her character
is even more under developed than the men around her and it makes you wonder if
you’re going to cast Michelle Rodriguez only to give her nothing why not make a
snip here, and there and change the gender of one of the larger roles and give
her that. Was Ne-Yo (as Corporal Kevin
Harris) that essential to the movie?
Still, she’s not the only one short changed but she does have the added
bonus of being the character to
propel the narrative into the thrilling final act even if she’s a little more
subdued than normal.
Issues aside, the direction of Battle: Los Angeles is strong, by far the director's strongest offering. The film
clearly has a mighty budget behind it, yet the director Jonathan Liebesman (Wrath of the Titans) has chosen
to not show you too much of what’s taking place up in the sky too early,
preferring to make due with (un)steadicam glimpses and peaks here and there,
teasing the audiences imagination. More
of this in Hollywood
please. The overwhelming sensation while
watching Battle: Los Angeles is how
excellent a videogame it would make. In fact so much of the pleasure derived
from the high octane moments came from the idea of what it would be like to play that mission. An abstract pleasure to say the least but yet
an incredibly interesting aesthetic choice.
There’s a lot to like about Battle: Los Angeles, it’s a movie that knows what it is trying to be and doesn’t
attempt to overreach yet at the same time it’s damned by its own short
arms. Poor characterisation, recycled
support narratives and hokey dialogue hamper what is an otherwise entertaining,
explosive, engaging romp through So-Cal all in the name of the human race. Extermination, not while the USMC is around, hoorah!
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