Let me just start with Hollywood knows better. In 2009 a very low budget and original film called District 9 turned out to be one of the bigger blockbusters of the Year. This year and (2010) they released some “original” alien invasion films in hopes to sift a little more gold out of that river. But a true original film does not come about by trying to be original. Original comes from an individual with lots of talent just making what he wants and doing what he loves. And that is why they will always fail in these efforts, and I know that they know better…..Now that I got that over with…
This film was not good. No reason to beat around the bush saying that it had its ups and downs. I would not recommend seeing this film. Maybe if your hanging out drinking with your friends and playing some MTG, have it playing in the background quietly, but I would never again pay to see it. The pacing is all wrong, the character development, though attempted, was almost non-existent. Honestly it plays like a level of Modern Warfare 2.
Battle: LA is about a broken and retiring Marine SSgt. Nance, played by the Aaron Eckhart (great performance) who wants nothing more to be out of the corp. Just his luck! Alien invasion! Sorry sgt, your going back in. After a truly great commencement of the invasion, I felt was the best part of the film, we follow Nance and his men through the typical “Deliver the hostages to the rendezvous “ fps mission stereotype. And that drags on, emphasis on the drags, for the better part of… well three quarters of the film I would say. *SPOILER ALERT* Then we have the touching, though honorable, I am going to commit suicide to save everyone moment (which could have been avoided if the first useless 3/4 of the film had never happened). Of course his soldiers decided to go with him because “MARINES DIE WITH HONOR! AND NEVER EVER GIVE UP!” *SPOILER ALERT END* After a somewhat awkward marine corp plug, we begin to get to the juicy stuff. The stuff that should have been introduced in the first half hour, THE PLOT!!!!! Destroy this thingy and the aliens lose. We get ten minutes of that and then the movie ends practically mid sentence……………
So let’s add the things it had going for it… Aliens, Sci-fi machinery, Aaron Eckhart, Michelle Rodriguez, dramatic home front battles, and a big fucking Hollywood budget. The film unfortunately suffered from unbalanced characters (introducing too many with too much info), and too much Greenglass-esque action scenes. And in this “alien invasion movie” the sci-fi part didn’t even kick in until the last 20 min of the film! They did a good job in the beginning of not fully showing us what the aliens looked like, and when we finally got to see them we were truly impressed. Now what confused me is why they didn’t run with it. We don’t go see and alien movie to watch more patriotic marines shooting big guns, we want to see aliens. We want to see badass aliens, we want to see them and how they live and how they eat. MORE ALIENS!!! But I digress, hopefully this is the last movie for a while TO ride the wake of D9 (yea right, ITS DOMINATING THE BOX OFFICE).
