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Friday, January 6, 2012

Review: Battle: Los Angeles

I repeat myself from yesterday, with a minor twist: Battle: Los Angeles is more enjoyable if you watch it as a war movie than as science fiction. It borrows relentlessly from ID4 and Aliens, the former in plot and the latter in that it focuses exclusively on one platoon of US Marines as they go into evacuated Santa Monica to rescue civilians, then blow up a lot of alien stuff.

There are only two personal stories, really - the staff sergeant got the lieutenant's brother killed in Afghanistan (ooh, tension!); and a kid's dad dies - an incident that provides some out-of-place sentimentality and a chance for Aaron Eckhart as the staff sergeant to go all Marines Never Quit!! on us. They could've left that out.

We barely get to know the aliens. There is some hideous nonsense about them wanting our water (ocean levels have decreased several inches because they're using our water for fuel - what??!) but I'll just ignore that. The military stuff is handled believably to my completely untrained eye and - be thankful for the crumbs - there are two quite nice roles for women in this testosterone monsoon.

The movie is fun, in exactly the same way Cowboys and Aliens was fun. I think I would have hated this on the big screen, but the $5 blu-ray was just fine.

1 comment:

Damon said...

I thought Battle: Los Angeles was a very good movie. I thought the special effects were the best part of the movie, especially with all of the alien craft that was in there. I just finished watching it and it was great! I’m waiting on the CES in Vegas currently and didn’t want to have to pay for the movie through my hotel, so I just streamed the movie on my laptop using the Blockbuster Movie Pass. What is great is that I didn’t have to pay extra just to watch the movie on my laptop! Plus when I get home, I can watch it on my TV as well or even go to the Blockbuster store and rent the DVD. Whether or not I worked for DISH, I would still have the Blockbuster Movie Pass because it’s times like this when being able to watch movies while I am away from home is the best!

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