Battle: Los Angeles (***)

Directed by Jonathan Liebesman

Starring: Aaron Eckhart, Ramon Rodriguez, Michelle Rodriguez, Bridget Moynahan, Michael Peña

Seen: March 13^th 2011

*** Out of ****

Battle: Los Angeles is one of the first big science fiction movies to hit South African shores in a while (Skyline was, judging by US feedback, luckily overseen by our distributors). The movie is an amalgamation of ideas and influences from many previous science fiction movies, chief among them Independence Day, District 9, and a bit of Alien (but for none of them overwhelmingly so). When earth is threatened by numerous massive meteors, armed forces are mobilised to deal with the possible fallout of the event. When the meteors turn out to be Alien spacecraft on an invasion path, the already ready Army can still not fully cope with the intensely advanced colonisation force. With many cities around earth already fallen, the focus is on LA, and their battle for survival.

SSgt. Nantz (Eckhart) is assigned one last tour as the meteor-mobilisation would have been his last, training recruits. His being over 40 in the army eventually shows whenever he shares a training field with the younger men. In a previous mission he was unfortunate enough to lose some good men, leaving his team (him as second in command) uncertain of his credentials. The team’s commander is 2^nd Lt. Martinez (R. Rodriguez), a young man just out of command training school.

The team’s mission is to retrieve an unknown number of civilians from a police station in an abandoned area before the army levels the area in a hopeful strike. Obviously things will go wrong and they run into the well-organised aliens, being expertly ambushed soon enough. As they progress towards their goal, they join with remnants of another team; among them TSgt. Santos (M. Rodriguez) from a different mission, one to find the “mothership” and attempt to destroy it. The team reaches the police station amidst flying bullets and rockets, and grittily fight their way through everything they are faced with. They lose a few men but save the civilians, delivering them safely before continuing TSgt. Santos’ mission.

The movie is extremely intense with the realistic and wild gunfights reaching epic proportions, only letting down for two/three short reprises as a regroup before the next assault/attack. The aliens are menacing and hard to kill, with some frightening technology at their disposal. The filming follows a similar approach to that used in Cloverfield, although the shaky-camera effect is used much less and the scenes where it is used do not last entirely long enough to completely upset the viewer. I do think that story-wise the movie had enough going for itself to not require this approach; a straight filming of the story with a little less battle confusion might have made for a better movie. Still, the action and fire-fights are of epic proportion, and the tension just doesn’t let up all the way through, making this one exhausting alien invasion movie. The dialogue is as cheesy as you would expect, and apart from one, SSgt. Nantz, all characters are only dealt with on a perfunctory basis. So if you enjoyed (and fondly remember) Independence Day and District 9 (even though District 9 doesn’t technically feature an Alien invasion), I definitely recommend Battle: Los Angeles; it’s not as good as District 9, but it’s absolutely better than Independence Day, and I enjoyed the almost mindless and preposterously endless action intensely.