“Battle: Los Angeles” Falls Apart On Screen

There are few bad movies that I feel passionate enough about to enthusiastically write a review on, but Battle: Los Angeles goes against the grain.

Starring Aaron Eckhart as Staff Sgt. Michael Nantz, Battle: LA is about a group of Marines that go in head-to-head combat with aliens. Eckhart’s Nantz is a veteran who is on his way out, when meteors start falling off the coast of Santa Monica and several other places around the globe. People soon find out, however, that these are no meteors; they’re slowing down as they approach the surface of the earth. These meteors are aliens, and they have come to end humanity. Just like that, Nantz is thrust back into war.

Battle: Los Angeles starts out promising, or maybe it just begins by successfully shielding the audience from how terrible it’s about to get. Explanation of the alien invasion is done via the airwaves from CNN and radio reports. This tactic is a quick yet effective way of explaining things. From there, however, Battle: LA falls apart. As quickly as Nantz is thrown back into the line of fire, so is the storyline. The accelerator is pushed down way too hard, as there is no progression from setup and background to the scenes of war. In turn, any tension and building anticipation is lost.

The battle scenes are sloppy. We quickly lose interest as the Marines move from one location to the next. Even though the film tells us where their location is by using captions on the lower part of the screen, it makes no difference in the scheme of it all. The camera work, done in a way that makes you feel in the middle of the action, is ineffective and just adds to the disorderly chaos. Moreover, there is rarely a camera shot that lasts longer than three seconds, so you never really know who is shooting who. This style of cinematography can be successful if utilized correctly (a la Cloverfield), but it’s nothing more than shoddy filmmaking in Battle: LA.

Along their convoluted and almost senseless journey through the city, Technical Sgt. Elena Santos (Michelle Rodriguez) joins the team. I could explain who she is and where she’s come from, but it doesn’t really matter.  She decides to move forward with them, a surprise to the group of men. “I didn’t get here on good looks,” she says. As for a career in acting, yes, you did get here on looks alone. Rodriguez hammers home the ridiculously cheesy lines, and is unconvincing with the ones that actually count.

The main reason Battle: Los Angeles doesn’t work is because of its characters. The filmmakers took little time and effort to develop the characters, so as a member of the audience, why should I take the time to invest in them myself? There actually is an attempt, albeit a lifeless one, to tug at the audience emotionally, but it is too far into the film to be effective.

Everyone has seen these characters before: the veteran who has given it his all and is about to retire, the rookie who is unprepared, the tough female who kicks some ass, and you can figure out the rest. What made recent alien invasion movies like District 9, Cloverfield and War of the Worlds (in order based on how much I liked them) so good is that they each had characters the audience could care about. Simply put, Battle: LA does not.

There seems to be a formula for making these kinds of movies work. While I applaud director Jonathan Liebesman and writer Christopher Bertolini for attempting to be original in some aspects of their film, nothing which they brought new to the table was an improvement over other movies in this genre.

The score was entertaining, but played too much of a second fiddle to the yelling and gunfire on screen.  Also, something I found interesting was the fighting style of the aliens. They have these massive crafts that are airborne, yet find themselves in gun fights out on the street.

Disappointingly, the alien aircrafts and artillery could have used some attention to detail, as there seemed no rhyme or reason behind it all. To boot, the aliens looked like a mix between

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