Battle Los Angeles

This is movie I've never seen before. Watched it today on Netflix. It is great movie with emotional moments and fantastic action. Negative reviews are just rude and making you skip a good action movie.

The alien invasion film is certainly nothing original. Recently, and upcoming, I can think of no less than 4 film and TV versions of this basic tale. Battle: Los Angeles doesn't bring anything new, plot wise, to this scenario. In fact, it operates on the thinnest of plot and some very underdeveloped characters. The only somewhat unique aspect, at least for an alien invasion story, is its gritty "you are there" aspect, filmed in a hand-held, jerky, thick of the action style. This isn't revolutionary either, but Battle: Los Angeles does manage to squeeze some momentum out of its running length.

As mentioned above, Battle: Los Angeles' plot can be summed up rather succinctly: Aliens land on Earth throughout the globe, including near Los Angeles. This alien force, operating with ground forces, begins to overrun the various cities they arrive at, and LA is no different. A squad of marines, led by Staff Sergeant Nantz (Aaron Eckhardt) is dispatched to attempt to retrieve possible civilian presence from a Santa Monica police station behind the front lines of the fighting. They encounter heavy resistance, and must find a way back to their forward operating base while keeping the civilians under their protection, and themselves, alive.

Battle: Los Angeles is obviously influenced, visually, by movies such as Black Hawk Down and Saving Private Ryan in the staging of its action. Much of the film is photographed with hand-held camera moves, the focus constantly whipping around, disorienting both the characters and the audience. While the technique is hardly unique, it does work to a degree in Battle: Los Angeles, bringing a different approach to a familiar plot. This isn't about scientists trying to figure out what the aliens want, or politicians wringing their hands about the "big decisions" in the midst of an alien onslaught. Battle: Los Angeles keeps its focus exclusively on the soldiers in the thick of battle, presenting the action in a no-holds barred manner. It is refreshing, at least from that perspective, to see a harder-edged, more realistic take on this material.

On the other hand, Battle: Los Angeles is a bit weak on the character front. The most development is given to Sergeant Nantz, who had just recently returned from a tour in Iraq where lives were lost and many assume he was to blame. This plays into several moments in the film, influencing other characters regarding the decisions he makes during the events of the story. Beyond that, aside from a few obligatory references to someone's relative or background, none of the other characters see much development. Physically, they are different enough to stand out from one another, but they are all mostly blank slates. There isn't complete detachment from the audience, several moments have some resonance emotionally, but not as much as if the filmmakers had taken some time to flesh the people out a bit more.

Battle: Los Angeles also suffers from being a bit overlong, and it's relentless, action oriented approach means that a lot of similar scenes play out over and over again: Marines trapped in combat, things don't look good, a character makes a choice or sacrifice, they manage to subdue their attackers, and then the film moves to the next scene in this same format. There is also little or no development of the alien menace. Snippets of television coverage featuring scientific experts fills in a little of the backstory to them, but it is mostly incidental. However, Battle: Los Angeles is not created in that style, it is about the action going on with the marines in the thick of it, and stays in that mode.

Aaron Eckhardt proves again his ability to sell a character, and he imbues Sergeant Nantz with a vigor and a degree of weariness that you buy into. Most of the other actors do a decent job of making us believe in these people as Marines in the thick of combat. A few recognizable names take roles, including Michele Rodriguez as an Air Force tech who joins up with the Marines and Bridget Moynihan as a civilian they are trying to protect, but neither has much to work with in regards to their characters other than to look tough or scared, respectively.

Battle: Los Angeles is certainly no masterpiece. It doesn't deviate much from the alien invasion template in regards to the broad strokes of its plot, and the style it was filmed in has been pioneered by other films. That being said, the film is engaging enough, and applies its style to a source material in a way that at least gives a different perspective on a familiar narrative framework. That doesn't make for a tremendous film, but not one that is completely in need of avoidance by the filmgoing public.

Battle: Los Angeles finds Marine Staff Sergeant Aaron Eckhardt ready to call it a career in the USMC. But an alien invasion that is disguised somewhat as a meteor shower upsets those plans. The aliens that are invading are not warrior Klingons or logical Vulcans, in fact they're really ugly and use our own sea water as fuel for their weapons.

I'm not sure of the science with that one, but we've certainly got a ton of sea water on this old Earth. Why the aliens just didn't land somewhere in the Pacific Ocean between South America and New Zealand and take all they need is something I'm still trying to figure out. Instead they land in all kinds of coastal and the world forgets it's feuds and tries to battle back.

The film is very similar to War Of The Worlds as Eckhardt's isolated squad, sent on a rescue mission for some civilians who were left behind in an abandoned police station in Santa Monica get first hand experience up close and personal with the aliens. It's very much like scientists Gene Barry and Ann Robinson in the 1952 classic being left behind and learning about what makes the Martians tick. But these are not scientists, they're making it up as they go along.

Eckhardt is second in command to young second lieutenant Ramon Rodriguez and there's tension there as well.

The acting takes a distant second place to the computer generated special effects. Although the stress of these Marines in combat with a very unknown enemy is telling and portrayed well on the screen.

Battle: Los Angeles is a good, not great science fiction film and it will no doubt attract a cult following of sorts, the same way Starship Troopers has.

First i would like to comment on all the people who gives grades like 1 or 10, try and be a little realistic please. Its freaking annoying that people really cant see how this scale is working. Look at the top 250 and at the bottom 100 .. Now that is amazing movies or just plain horrible movies. If you don't feel you got what you wanted out of this movie then maybe your expectation's was to high. Godfather, Fight Club etc, those are movies that deserve a solid 9 or 10. Diary of a cannibal, Dream Well thats movies that deserve a solid 1 or 2. So stop your pessimistic crap about how bad this movie is and rate 1. No one can ever say that this movie is worse then any on the bottom 100. Ihave personally watched 1000+ movies so i find my self quite knowledge about a good movie or not, and this is not a great movie, but you get solid mindless action movie with decent graphic and a good acting crew. It gets a little long but again, no one cheats you in this movie. No one said to you before you watched it that it was movie of the year. You have a trailer and you build your own expectations. Give it a honest chance and stop judging it like it was a episode "bad" episode of jersey shore or its a 8th wonder of the world. Just judge fair for gods sake.

I would have given it 6.5/10 but i cant half here.

Solid action, decent actors and a decent night entertainment, if you stop believing its the movie of all time, and just go for it.

Judge fair, keep it real.

I went into this movie with low expectations after the relative disappointment which was skyline, a film that promised so much from the trailer and delivered far less.

However, im glad to say any misgivings I had were quickly expelled. Now don't get me wrong, this isn't the greatest film ever made, and in many ways it fails to hold a candle to the likes of independence day, which in my opinion is one of the greatest films of its type ever made. It does however, bring a much more up close and personal aspect to an alien invasion. Its more like watching a war filmed in Iraq or something, but that in itself is what separates it from a muddle of recent alien invasion movies that fails to ignite any kind of fire in the mind.

The film moves at an unrelenting pace, with good action sequences and cgi to boot, its predictable at times and the ending fails to come up with something clever or original, but hey ... you cant have everything !!!