Battle: Los Angeles is more metformin hcl dosage of a war film than a typical science fiction alien invasion plot, but you don’t need me to tell you that. The trailers and TV spots make it perfectly clear that Battle: LA owes more to films like Black Hawk Down or The Hurt Locker than Independence Day and War of the Worlds. Director Jonathan Liebsman uses the same visceral, “down in the trenches” style of camerawork that has become synonymous with the modern war epic to great effect. Instead of watching the battle from afar on a world-scale, you feel like you are witnessing a real invasion on ground level. The stark realism never fades and it is this quality that distinguishes Battle: LA from its contemporaries in what has become an increasingly crowded genre.
For all metformin hydrochloride 500 mg it does well, Battle: LA does not reinvent the wheel here. The realism and triathlon-level pacing mask the film’s shortcomings in some instances where they might be more apparent in a different movie. Hell, Skyline would have seemed a lot better with this style of filmmaking. Battle: LA is not, nor ever could have been that kind of critical meltdown, but the sheer impressiveness of how immersive the whole thing is makes it at least appear to be a better film than it actually is.
U.S. Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Nantz (Aaron Eckhart) is preparing one last crop of new recruits before he retires from the military. Lucky for him, he is pulled from a routine training exercise to aid in the emergency evacuation of the California coastline before a freak meteor shower hits the shore. Nantz is assigned as a last minute replacement to a unit under the command of an arrogant, young lieutenant fresh out of officer school. Also in the unit is the pissed-off brother of a soldier killed in combat under Nantz’s watch. It’s easy to see why Nantz picked this time to pack his bags and leave the corps. He is a man respected by his superiors, but generally loathed and dreaded by his subordinates due to his undeserved reputation for being careless and getting soldiers killed in battle. He managed to survive a mission that left most of his old unit dead and since that time, rumors and word of mouth have painted him into an unfair picture. So in other words… this guy is disgruntled, out to prove a point, and not someone aliens want to mess with.
The action escalates quickly. We are given barely even ten minutes of buildup before the “meteor shower” (everyone realizes they’re not meteors just in time to not be able to do anything about it) hits the Pacific and extra-terrestrials are storming the beach. There is no lag-time as the aliens start firing on people as soon as they are on dry land. I applaud the filmmakers for getting right to the point and forgoing much of the worn out, pre-invasion antics we are usually forced to sit through in these films. They did still find room, however, for the obligatory, “Where the hell did these things come from?” “I don’t know, maybe (insert name of random foreign country here),” comments from the characters when it would be plainly obvious to any sane person that they are aliens from outer-fucking-space.
“Dear God… I had no idea the Canadians were capable of building things like this.”
There are one or two groaners like that early on, but the dialogue is good for the most part and rarely wastes time trying to be overly clever. Try to imagine the characters from Independence Day speaking their lines in this film. Now imagine the complete opposite of that. The big exception for me is Michelle Rodriguez. She magically appears out of nowhere about one third of the way through just to remind us that this is in fact a movie we are watching. All of her lines might as well have been plucked out of any of her past movies and inserted where appropriate. Rodriguez is not bad here, but she has become so typecast that it is almost hard to buy her in these, “tough, mouthy chick that’s kind of hot in a way that I’m not quite willing to discuss with anyone,” roles anymore.
On the other hand, Eckhart is just awesome as always. He carries the film on his shoulders the whole way and brings amazing depth to what could have otherwise been a relatively one-dimensional character. I have always felt that Eckhart is one of the most underutilized great actors out there and his performance as Staff Sergeant Nantz in Battle: LA only reaffirms that for me. Hopefully more big roles come his way soon.
The aliens themselves in this film are an interesting bunch. Because we never step outside our core group of characters we never get much in the way exposition, so we don’t really learn a whole lot about them. We do learn that they are biological creatures augmented with robotic components and weaponry surgically grafted to their bodies. We also learn that they can be killed by–gasp–shooting them in the heart in a pointless and wasted scene where Nantz and a lady veterinarian dissect one.
We find out a lot more about their technology than we do about the actual alien invaders. The design of their spacecraft and weaponry makes no logical sense by our understanding of engineering, but it’s something different and everything looks functional. These guys are also fighting on much more even terms with us than other alien races. Their stuff can be destroyed by our weapons with only a slightly greater degree of difficulty and they have no energy weapons or deflector shields. They use bombs and bullets just like us. In a way the Battle: LA aliens are almost like the crude, Soviet imitations of the Independence Day aliens. They do have one particularly admirable bit of tech, though. A TV analyst at one points states that their ships are literally powered by water and they are using our oceans to fuel their spacecraft. He also says that even though there are only something like nineteen hydro-powered mother ships around the globe, that sea levels have already visibly lowered over the course of about five or six hours. Yeah, bullshit buddy.
Overall: 7/10
Directed by Jonathan Liebsman. Written by Christopher Bertolini. Production Design by Peter Wenham. Cinematography by Lucas Ettlin. Original Music by Brian Tyler. Edited by Christian Wagner.
Starring: Aaron Eckhart, Michelle Rodriguez, Ramon Rodriguez, Michael Pena, Ne-Yo, Bridgette Moynahan
