Battle: Los Angeles

This is a movie about Space Aliens attacking the Earth: KA-BOOM, yeah. Los Angeles is one of the places that gets invaded, and we are with a platoon of Marines who have to go block to block and shoot it out with the Bad Guys, who have better guns, armor, you name it, their shit is better. It’s sick, and it gets intense, with lots of stuff getting blowed up real good. But this action only kicks in after about 35 minutes of blah blah blah about people and their feelings and crap like that, which all coulda been inserted into the shitstorm of fighting with a few well-chosen pieces of dialogue instead of the made-for-TV-movie setup this thing uses even though it did not have to. Seriously, walk in about 30 minutes in and you will see a better movie, with other pieces of actor-ly emotion handled with a simple look or line of dialogue, and it doesn’t dilute any of the dramaturgy that goes on later with Aaron Eckhart and his acting, which is great, really. He totally kills it as a veteran with survivor’s guilt from being in action in Iraq, which this film does not try and hit you over the head with, as in drawing painfully obvious parallels to that action, because what we all have our asses in the seats here for is to see us—as in U.S.—fight some space aliens. And you get it—and while it’s not the hyper-bloody kind of real violence like a real war movie should have, it’s got a realistic, uncomfortable edge to it as you witness how hard it is to perform the simplest of tasks while some motherfucking space aliens from another world are blasting away at you, and they are complete fucking assholes and you want them to die, seriously. Bridget Moynahan gives good face although she doesn’t have much to do, Ne-Yo does a nice job as a Marine Corporal, and Michelle Rodriguez stands out in what is becoming her stereotypical role of a badass but she always makes it work because she totally is one, and they definitely have this thing set up for a sequel and we wonder where the video game is.

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