By Matt Brunson
BATTLE: LOS ANGELES
*1/2
DIRECTED BY Jonathan Liebesman
STARS Aaron Eckhart, Michelle Rodriguez
It takes a special type of hack to make Roland Emmerich look like Steven Spielberg, but Jonathan Liebesman appears to be the right man for the job. The less said about most Emmerich movies (like 2012 and Matthew Broderick Meets Godzilla), the better, but he did helm Independence Day back in the mid-1990s, and for all that film’s faults — specifically, that it contained not a single idea it could rightfully call its own — it knew how to milk the hell out of its H.G. Wells-by-way-of-Hollywood premise and, silly as it sounds, make us proud to be human. Battle: Los Angeles, which mines the same territory as ID and countless other alien-invasion opuses that came before it, is so feeble that we really don’t care who wins the global skirmish: the E.T.s or the earthlings. At least if the aliens win, we won’t have to sit through any more movies like this one.
The constantly undervalued Aaron Eckhart, last seen doing terrific work in Rabbit Hole, and the exciting Michelle Rodriguez, once again relegated to grunt duty (she basically plays the same role here as in Avatar, S.W.A.T. and Resident Evil), are the closest things to “name” actors in this endeavor (added bonus: a “name” rapper in Ne-Yo!), but their welcome presence can only drag this up a smidgen. They’re both cast as soldiers (he’s a Marine sergeant, she’s with the Air Force) who spring into action when Earth is invaded by creatures bent on wiping out all human life. Most of the world’s major cities — London, Paris, New York, Gastonia, NC — have already been decimated, leaving LA as the last great hope for humankind’s survival. So it’s up to Eckhart’s Sgt. Nantz and his gang to rise to the occasion. “Retreat? Hell!” bark the Marines at regular intervals, as a sign that they’ll never back down.
Battle: Los Angeles is such an ADD-afflicted action film that it’s impossible to invest much emotion in it. There’s a cursory attempt at the beginning to humanize its characters — This one’s getting married! This one’s not combat-ready! This one can burp out the lyrics to “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”! (OK, just joshing on the last one) — but they’re all so one-dimensional that once the fighting begins, it’s difficult to keep track of who’s who. “Where’s Lenihan?” someone asks regarding a missing comrade, but they might as well have been asking, “Where’s Waldo?” for all it ultimately matters.
The design of the alien critters is the usual blend of crunchy on the outside and squishy on the inside — they resemble the monsters from Predator and Alien, to name but two of many — but that’s OK, since the camerawork and editing are executed at such dizzying paces that we never get a good look at most of the CGI work anyway.
“Retreat”? Hell, yeah! Where’s the nearest exit?
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This article appears in Mar 8-14, 2011.
At least this movie is more entertaining than your predictable, pretentious, pernicious rambling about how you don’t like alien invasion movies. Who wants to read a review about a baseball game from someone who doesn’t like baseball.
Matt, after reading a dozen reviews you’ve written it seems that you don’t have anything nice to say about anything. Being a critic is a very difficult job in part because of the objectivity it requires. When you go out to see movies week after week you only grow more severe and negative, while after a long week at work (thats the thing that most people do durning the week instead of seeing free movies and making bizarre segues to iron maiden songs) i really like going to a movie and then reading what my local paper had to say about it, as a discussion between friends, i liked this you liked that and so forth. You’re the kind of friend no one wants to go to the movies with. Lighten up dude.
Hi, Bradley. Thanks for writing. I’m not sure where in my review I state I don’t like alien invasion movies. I just don’t like bad ones like Battle: Los Angeles. But I do like Invasion of the Body Snatchers (both major versions), War of the Worlds (ditto), The Thing (both versions), the original Predator, The Blob, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, The Quatermass Experiment, I Married a Monster from Outer Space and, of course, Independence Day. And those are just the ones off the top of my head. (You would be correct, however, in assuming I didn’t like Battlefield: Earth.)
As for the tired line of a critic not liking anything he sees, I do understand that’s usually a defense mechanism when a viewer finds a movie he enjoyed being trashed. But go to (for starters) http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/theclog/2010/12/24/film-2010-the-best-worst/ and you’ll find plenty of movies I enjoyed. Give ’em a shot!
P.S. Just FYI, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” is by Iron Butterfly, not Iron Maiden.
Cheers!
Honestly I do not know how this movie got such bad reviews. Would I vote for it as movie of the year? No, however it delivered far more entertainment value than I expected going into it.
Defiantly much better than War of the Worlds, where the movie ends due to bacteria. Sure there were cheesy one liners but hey its an action movie not a drama.
I guess it just seems that Battle: LA had many missed opportunities to do something interesting with the genre substance-wise. You can argue it is just an action film..but look at Dark Knight, that was action and drama with atleast a brain on it.
Check out my short, its not perfect but we did what we could on a tight deadline.enjoy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOrsJ0wmsQ8
The feature will be about an alien invasion that may or may not be really happening..and how far we’ll go to obtain the UFO technology with an elite aerial & ground task force.
What can I say. I was expecting shit and I got shit. But what was unexpected was that I got not just one but 10 servings of shit. Battle Los Angeles makes that piece of turd Skyline look half decent.
My friend dragged me to see this movie. We are no longer friends.
Hmmm, I don’t really get all the haters here. Matt, you concisely expressed my view of the movie perfectly. Aaron Eckhart is quite good, but the movie is dreadful. I didn’t care one bit what happened, and when it was over the consensus was “so what?”
Do you get paid for this?
’cause honestly, you need to look into something that doesn’t requie your opinion…like port-a-potty cleaning or being a mime…
p.s. sorry you’re not a fan of the “rarely” made good movies.