The important thing is what it does well, and if you enjoy a blockbuster that asks nothing of you in return other than your willingness to suspend disbelief and cynicism, then you could do much worse. That the film fails on most levels isn’t important.
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It’s only in its slower moments the film’s ample budget fails to paint over the cracks of a script that probably should have remained on Syfy’s TV movie production desk, instead of being given a $100m green light.īecause I didn’t come to Battle: Los Angeles expecting anything, to come away having enjoyed an utterly brainless, yet consistently entertaining two hours came as something of a pleasant surprise. It’s the action itself that’s the star here, not the actors or plot. The action carries the film, and does so to such a degree that this is an action film in the purest sense. Special effects are almost faultless across the board, the aliens themselves look excellent, despite their lack of anything approaching an original concept, and every explosion and plume of smoke (of which there are many) is photorealistic and hugely effective. The budget has allowed Liebesman to create spectacle and scale to a degree the script probably doesn’t deserve, and from beginning to end the film looks fantastic. The film’s second saving grace is the money that has clearly been spent on it, and with only Eckhart and Michelle Rodriguez (replicating her role from Avatar exactly) being the main recognisables, it’s all visible on the screen. There is also an incessant, rabble-rousing score that pollutes and permeates almost every second of the film too, giving it a very Bay-ish feel hat the film really could have done without, as whether accompanied by mournful strings or filmed in slow motion, you never really care enough about the death of a character you don’t really know to warrant the time the film spends mourning them. It actually had me thinking someone had quietly made a sequel to Team America and asked Harvey Dent to be in it. Yet, the film can also reach almost intolerable levels of cheese on occasion, to such an extent they should seriously consider putting a warning to lactose intolerants on the case.Įckhart tells a crying boy whose father just died to be brave because “Marines don’t quit!”, while a dying soldier hands Eckhart a note and actually uses the phrase “please…give this to my wife.” I happened to be drinking tea during a scene in which a teary-eyed Eckhart salutes the American flag, and I sniggered so hard half a cup of PG Tips came out of my nose. That happens.īemoaning the lack of character or story in this film is a bit like bemoaning the lack of poultry in a packet of chicken Super Noodles, granted. Others talk about seeing their sweethearts when they get home.
Some members of the squad don’t trust Eckhart at the beginning of the film. The squad’s commanding officer, fresh from officer training, who buckles under the pressure but eventually comes good, is Gorman from Aliens.
Aaron Eckhart’s reluctant leader, bathed in pathos and suffering from nervous shakes, is Tom Hank’s character in Saving Private Ryan. Worse than that, characters appear to have been stolen wholesale from other films. Here we have possibly the most generic group of stock soldiers ever committed to celluloid. The upside of this is that, when it matters and the bullets start flying, the grainy, docu feel really does give firefights with CG aliens the necessary realism to keep your interest adequately piqued, thus just about justifying its presence.īecause, it has to be said, the characters certainly won’t keep you interested. However the cinéma vérité style Liebesman chooses to employ here has been the downfall of many an action sequence over the last ten years, and the infamous ‘shaky-cam’ makes its presence felt here, with scenes of one-on-one dialogue filmed as if the cameraman had just polished off his twentieth coffee of the day. Quick, snappy and assured, director Jonathan Liebesman clearly knows his way around an action sequence, despite still falling a little short of the visceral punchiness of Neil Blomkamp or Paul Greengrass. These encounters are undoubtedly the film’s raison d’etre, and it is a relief to say that the vast majority of them are excellently handled. More a collection of action scenes than a threaded narrative, the story, such as it is, merely provides reasons to funnel our group of Marines from one hostile encounter to the next.
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