Film Friday - Battle: Los Angeles Review

Title: Battle: Los Angeles
Genre: Action/Sci-fi/War
Directed by: Jonathan Liebesman
Written by: Chris Bertolini
Starring:
Aaron Eckhart
Michelle Rodriguez
Ramon Rodriguez
Bridget Moynahan
Release Date: March 11th, 2011
Rating: 3.5/5






Battle: LA follows a group of marines during an alien invasion as the battle for the control of LA. Or, more specifically, Battle: LA follows a group of marines as they first attempt to rescue civilians then, later, escape LA and try to find a way to defeat the alien menace.

Battle: LA seems to follow the tropes of the natural disaster genre  and war movies moreso than an alien invasion. You get the main character who is somewhat dissatisfied with their life, you get the inital introduction of the characters to personify them and make the audience care, destruction of urban areas, people running around screaming, explosions, etc etc. except, instead of a volcano or earthquake, you have aliens. As far as the storyline goes, its pretty typical, aliens are invading to get our resources. That's it. The other storyline, the characters, is somewhat succeful in that no, I didn't get attached to any of the characters other than Aaron Eckhart's character but there were times I was wondering if they would ultimately succeed or fail.

The aliens in this are pretty cool and are something I haven't seen before in alien movies, which was a pleasant surprise, although their ships were pretty bland-more connected piles of scrap metal than actual ships. Another surprise is that the aliens and humans are on pretty even terms as far as combat technology and warfare. Yes, they do have superior technology, but it has weaknesses that the marines exploit, which makes the aliens feel more believable. CGI is pretty good too.

One thing I didn't care for was the shaky gureilla handycam style filming. Yes, during the fighting it works, but in stationary shots the camera keeps moving a zooming in and out needlessly and its really distracting.

Battle: LA, for what it is, executes it pretty well and makes a decent movie. That, and twoface is in it. I recommend checking it out.