Aliens land in Los Angeles this weekend to kill all humans.
Jonathan Liebesman is not very popular for directing past projects like “Darkness Falls” and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning.” But he falls flat on this transition out of the smaller time horror flicks and into the big budget sci-fi action genre with “Battle: Los Angeles.”
The movie follows a military platoon as they try to fight off a legion of alien invaders intent on destroying Los Angeles. It begins with a series of meteors falling to Earth and specifically landing in LA. Once on Earth the meteors release alien-animal Transformer-like machines in order to wipe out humanity for a reason that’s not exactly clear.
The film’s lead Aaron Eckhart is great. He is everything you want in an action hero and it also helps that he is genuinely a good actor. Michelle Rodriguez co-stars which is not a surprise since she has a tendency to pick roles where she does some serious butt-kicking.
Even though the acting was the greatest part about the film there were so few lines of dialogue it made “ET” seem like a chatterbox. Screaming screaming and more screaming over the noise of the cringingly awful alien robots of death is what catalogues as the majority of the dialogue in the film. Since the movie is about the battle for Los Angeles some violence it is necessary but it would have been nice to see some more dialogue that was longer than a phrase here and there.
Even still the action is overdrawn predictable full of mind-numbing gun fights and explosions that lack any sort of real creativity. Since the movie lacks in story and character development the hope rides on all the action and special effects. Unfortunately they don’t really help the movie out so much.
Yes there were a few cool scenes but the edits are choppy and without any coherent sequence the fast pace of the film makes it easy to forget about the cool parts. The movie had potential to do something different with the alien invasion war-for-the-world concept. But it sadly does not follow through.
The best scenes of the movie are those with the best special effects. If only the aliens didn’t look like hot messes the movie might have been a little bit more … tolerable. It was as if the aliens were embittered Transformers mixed with the “Independence Day’s” aliens.
As the movie rages on it feels increasingly like watching a video game which has its pros and cons. Pro: It’s a different shooting style. Con: It’s a different shooting style. It works well in some scenes but for the whole movie the shooting style becomes distracting and rather annoying. It hops around so much and at such a quick pace.
It’s an apocalyptic war movie that is filled with elaborate explosion scenes and grandiose battles between the ridiculous alien things and the military. It’s perfect if you’re looking to simply pass some time not using your brain in any way because the movie lacks any real depth.
But for those of you expecting a little more out of this film you will be sorely disappointed. It’s uninventive and the sense of urgency you should get for the salvation of LA (and inevitably for the world) is weak. It’s so over the top and in your face that during some cliché scenes and interactions it’s more natural to laugh. Odd reaction since it is supposed to be the imminent destruction of the world and all.