Movie Review: ‘BATTLE: LOS ANGELES’

Film-goers have always had a constant love for the theme of the foreign intruder.  Whether it is an unknown assailant breaking into one’s home or an unknown alien force invading our planet, our fear of foreign invaders will always be a heavily explored theme in films.  Battle: Los Angeles is the most recent film to invade the genre.  What can we learn from this new foreign invader?

Aaron Eckhart, in a much deserved starring role, stars as Staff Sgt. Michael Nantz.  His retirement from command comes to a screeching halt when he is forced to help a squad investigate what is originally believed to be a shower of meteorites.  Much to their surprise, these are not big piles of rocks falling from the sky, but a plethora of advanced alien space ships.  What follows is not a friendly meet and greet with the new guests, but an immediate attack by the invaders.  Eckhart, with a team of young hip comrades, is ordered to retrieve and bring to safety a group of survivors that are held up in a police station in the danger zone.  Through the journey, the group is forced to survive against the hi-tech alien invaders and deal with tension that is mounting between some of the soldiers.

Battle: Los Angeles is a loud explosive summer action fest . . . no question about it.  Never once does it try to hide the fact that it is anything more.  We never get some moral or philosophical reasoning behind the alien’s attack or a metaphorical explanation for why we deserved to get attacked.  Instead, the movie is a non-stop “documentary” style action-ride that will bring to mind Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down and Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan.  This is not a bad thing though.  In fact, director Jonathan Liebesman handles the action with extreme confidence and presents many well-staged and tense action set-pieces.  Using quick editing and shaky camera work (a little too shaky for my taste at times, yet no where near the level of Cloverfield), the film is an absolute thrill in places, especially in the very exciting finale. 

Unfortunately Battle does not carry with it the great scripts that these two films I just mentioned have.  Using every single generic military line you can think of,  Battle’s script is a play by numbers of every war film that preceded it.  The script is not excrutiating bad, it just comes off as extremely generic and stale.  Thankfully the film wastes little time on dialogue and more on the soldiers’ run-in after run-in with these half mechanical half alien creatures.  The aliens have a very creative look to them when you can catch a glimpse of them.  Unfortunately, they don’t spend much time explaining the technology of these creatures.  I would have loved for them to develop these strange creatures a little more.  Yet, when they are on the screen, the aliens and their extremely complex ships are a pleasure to behold.  In fact, the CGI in this film is some of the best CGI I have seen on screen … well … since 2009’s alien/sci-fi offering District 9.

Like I previously hinted at, another aspect worth noting is Aaron Eckhart.  His by the book character is given new life thanks to his emotional portrayl of the charcter.  Many times throughout the film, you can feel the weight of his character.  This is especially evident in scenes involving him comforting a father and son that Eckhart helps to rescue.  Aside from Eckhart, most of the actors present unmemorable characters that you have seen in every other war film.

Battle: Los Angeles never sets its sights too high, which helps in the fact that you most likely won’t be too let down by the overall ride.  March is here, and with it is the new start of the summer blockbuster!  Much more entertaining than any Pirates of the Caribbean or Transformer’s sequel, Battle: Los Angeles is a fun Saturday afternoon at the movies complete with top-notch CGI.  Though the script is anything but grounbreaking, the energetic directing by Jonathan Liebesman presents a new voice in action filmmaking.