[Movies] Battle: Los Angeles review - Spoilers incl.

[Deleted]

I just came back from watching Battle: Los Angeles and was fairly satisfied overall. While it didn’t blow me away as much as I had hoped, it still delivered on what it promised. A semi-realistic alien invasion flick set in an urban environment. I couldn’t help but feel that the directors or writers must have somehow been inspired by Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. At least I could see definite parallels.

The movie starts of right in the action which seems a little odd at first, since you’d expect a certain build-up. But since it never was a big secret was this movie was going to be about, it’s no big deal. It gives them the opportunity to show off some nice money-shots, which helps draw in the viewers I guess. Anyway, the movie does cut back after that quick intro and gives us the expected introduction to the characters. Since the story follows a platoon, there are quite a few characters and names introduced, none of which I can remember. I guess this indicates the first weakness of the film. While we are introduced to the platoon members none of them is given enough screen-time to make them memorable in any form. Except for the lead character, whose name I can’t remember either. The result is that I simply didn’t care much about any character. Not even the protagonist since there wasn’t really much to like about him. He was the “old Sarge” type with some war-trauma issues, but nothing really connected you to him. So even when some of the platoon members die, it didn’t feel very sad. Then again, the film doesn’t dwell on the deaths of individuals much, so I guess that was the plan all along. I just feel that fewer characters would have made the movie a lot better. A little humour here and there would have also helped with some comic relief. The constant action does get a little tiresome after a while. While the movie does have a typical “inspiration talk” moment, it too is not overdone, despite feeling a little unnecessary.

As for the aliens, well they’re just that. There isn’t a big build-up to the whole invasion so it’s not really that exciting when they do attack. I also can’t help but feel that the movie went a little “cheap” when it came to the whole invasion thing. While there are a few money-shots, they are quite rare and you don’t really get a feel for the whole scale of the invasion. You could argue it’s a stylistic device since we’re following a single platoon, but I felt a bit cheesed.

While the alien looks aren’t disclosed immediately, which does lead to a few, rare ”tension” moments, they are shown fairly soon in the film. From that point onwards, they seem to die rather easily compared to before, which seems a little odd. It's like in many other movies really, as soon the the mystery is revelead you let the guns do the talking The infantry especially doesn’t seem very scary and ends up being nothing more than cannon-fodder, the longer the movie goes. While there are some other machines that come into play, the aliens overall cannot compare to District 9, Aliens, Terminator or even Independence Day. They just feel very generic. Since we also learn nothing about them, their planet or motivation (besides wanting our water for energy) their whole design is rather empty. They aren’t “evil” and they don’t seem to be “misunderstood”. I just feel that that could have used a little more exploration or you might as well have China Invading.

So the Marines do their thing, we get a couple of HURRAAHH moments and the film ends with a small scale victory. I guess you got to hand it to the writers that they didn’t “end the war”, leaving room for possible sequels.

Overall I’d give the movie a 6.5 out of 10. While not living up to it's full potential, it wasn't terribad either.

The good sides were:
-Cool scenario
-Urban Warfare
-Semi realistic look and feel
-Not too soppy i.e. no artificial love story, “save the little girls” moments or crying too much over losses.

The weak sides were:
-Character development i.e. we cared about no one
-Main-Character wasn’t very likeable/memorable and felt very generic
-No humour whatsoever
-Slightly disappointing aliens leaving many questions unanswered.
-Not that much in the way of special-effects/money shots.

[Fuzzzie]

I formatted it a little better for you. Hope you don't mind. The wall of text thing turns people off. Great review though. Looking forward to seeing it.

[Irony]

Alright heres the plot, from someone who hasn't even watched the trailers.
Everyones happy.
1 man is disgruntled (Our hero)
Evil People come.
The heroes begin to fight the evil people.
Someone of importance dies.
Disgruntled hero sheds one tear.
It looks like all hope is lost.
Disgruntled hero takes charge and defeats the evil people in a "thrilling" fight scene.
Movies over.

[shiftbull]

mhe, Marines Propaganda.

[Deleted]

mhe, Marines Propaganda.

Can't deny it did feel like a huge U.S. Army/Navy commercial. Then again, so was Independence Day and that movie kicked ass.

I just check again and according to the imdb, Battle: Loas Angeles only had a 70 Mio. production budget which is fairly low. It definately shows throughout the movie.

[Blazefury5]

This movie was no where near as satisfying as Independence Day.

[Shamslam]

mhe, Marines Propaganda.

Can't be as big a recruitment ad as Transformers...anyway...

It looks interesting. Your review makes me lean towards passing on it though. Although I was always a sucker some aliens. Gotta love Independence Day. Are the visual effects really crappy like Independence Days, because I kind of liked the cheesy special effects. lol

[Clockwork Pinkie]

The good sides were:
-Cool scenario
-Urban Warfare
-Semi realistic look and feel
-Not too soppy i.e. no artificial love story, “save the little girls” moments or crying too much over losses.

The weak sides were:
-Character development i.e. we cared about no one
-Main-Character wasn’t very likeable/memorable and felt very generic
-No humour whatsoever
-Slightly disappointing aliens leaving many questions unanswered.
-Not that much in the way of special-effects/money shots.

Pretty sure those "weak sides" add to the realistic look and feel. I highly doubt if aliens did invade, they're going to play it like a kids movie, announce why they are there over a loud speaker that can be heard over the world, then begin their assault. It was a good movie for what it was. A popcorn flick you're seeing for the action scenes that we're a sucker for, which is why Michael Bay is still making money. The story had every alien and military cliche known to man, but it was still a good movie.

[Deleted]

I agree though, that overall Independence Day was the much better Popcorn flick.

Sure, none of them were particularly deep and both stuck to very basic formulas, but in ID4 they worked much better.

[moaradin]

Please don't tell me the humans just suddenly win even though there would be no chance of that even happening.

[Warwithin]

Did anyone else HATE the fact that it moved around time-wise so often? Hours could pass between scenes without any explanation as to what happened.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but (SPOILERS LOOK AWAY LOOK AWAY) did they not enter a sewer in the middle of the night, walk through there in about 5 minutes killing a couple baddies, then exit the sewer in the middle of the day?

And that wasn't the only occasion.

[Defengar]

Your review was spot on.
The dialogue was pretty generic and/or bad (but its rare to find a war film with good dialogue so i didnt get to made because that was to be expected)
The characters had severe lack in development and they were so meh i cant remember a single name from the film besides the Hector kids name (thats only because its an odd name and i love history) despite seeing it only 5 hours ago.
The aliens were very weak and not very threatening. In the begining of the film they apear ver fast and very hard to kill but as time goes on you see them drop like flies in some cases and ofen their armor appear weak as hell (seriously, why would they develop inch think metal plate armor that can be punched through like paper by a depleted uranium round instead of developing much stronger Kevlar type materials?!?!!)

The story was paper thin in several ways too, unlike most alien invasion movies where they aliens either have force fields, spread out extremely fast, or have weapons that we simply cant top through normal means, the only thing that was really dangerous about these thing was their drone aircarft. In a real situation like the one in the movie where almost all civilians had been evacuated from the city several hours earlier we would almost certainly have said "DIE YOU SHITS" and instead of sending in air+ground troops and sustaining heavy loses we would have thrown a nuke or 2 in their general direction and annihilated them (if explosives and bullets were able to kill them a massive blast wave+ fire and radiation definitely would have). Throughout them movie it seemed like they were holding back since in real life we would be beating on them with everything in our arsenal (which nothing but cockroaches could ever make through).

Overall it was decent action flick but nothing to write home about. "Independence day" still has my vote for best alien attack movie despite not having as good special effects (Independence day also have REAL actors)

---------- Post added 2011-03-12 at 02:49 AM ----------

Alright heres the plot, from someone who hasn't even watched the trailers.
Everyones happy.
1 man is disgruntled (Our hero)
Evil People come.
The heroes begin to fight the evil people.
Someone of importance dies.
Disgruntled hero sheds one tear.
It looks like all hope is lost.
Disgruntled hero takes charge and defeats the evil people in a "thrilling" fight scene.
Movies over.

You got everything right exept the "someone important dies" part lol. In the movie there are plenty of deaths but the characters are so 2 dimensional the only people you really give a shit for are the kids (cause their kids) and the main hero (whom i only cared about while watching the movie and now i cant even remember his name. Horay for crappy character development)

[Havekk]

I went into this movie from hearing it was like black hawk down and cloverfield, I had nothing to do today and grabbed my buddy and went and saw it. It was exactly what i expected and i really enjoyed it, i'm not going to compare it to other movies because that isn't what it was made for, it was made as pure entertainment, I see a lot of people saying "i liked independance day better" yeah i look at this story as a more modern telling of that minus the sappy will smith/love story/wedding stuff

Both movies require you to suspend your beliefs on the truth, if you would even call it that, of the actual matter. I mean independance day the aliens are destroyed...by a computer virus...come on. SPOILERS and in B:LA the aliens crash into our planet and the big marine boss goes "we control the skies!" ....dude....they just arrived in spaceships...you really that dense? Also, if a species is able to travel through space to make it to our planet to steal our resources (water) you would think they would have come up with a more logical and quick way to get in and do it, the alien craft reminded me of district 9, it worked for district 9 because the prawns were like a 3rd world alien, these aliens weren't.

Character development is cheap yes, but most action movies are like that, again you just kinda need to sit down and hold on and suspend your beliefs. If you went into this movie expecting an inception, or Benjamin button, you clearly had the wrong idea off the get go. Overall I enjoyed it, it did what i wanted it to, i'd watch it again for the pure fun of it, whereas i'd watch inception for the intellectual ideas behind it.


Also, i did have a blast after the movie naming the action movie cliches i saw in it, HEAVY SPOILERS HERE




1. The haggard war veteran who has to reclaim themselves from a questionable past who you know will be the hero
2. The emotional guy who you know is going to have PTSD mid fight and freakout.
3. SHAKY CAMERA EVERYWHERE
4. The smokey "WHATS THAT" "OMG COVER ME".....oh wait its just a dog....."NAW JK ALIENS!!!! OMG"...classic in a lot of movies lol
5. The angsty soldier who hates the leader but through the characters involvement becomes the salvation for the leader (aka you knew he would live or die in a very long dramatic death scene holding hands with the main character saying "go on, you have to" or "put the cube in my chest sam")
6. The man who had a wife and he kissed his pregnant wives belly, the moment he did that i knew he was going to die.
7. The dramatic "LEAVE ME MAN!!!" I GOT THIS MAN!!!....."oh yeah, give this to my wife!"
8. Heroic civilian act
9. Random smart civilian (be it doctor, computer scientist, nuclear scientist, smart people are everywhere) who helps in someway (vet helping with alien)
10. Sad moment followed by heroic speech to bring the team back together.
11. Obvious flaw in the aliens grand design plan (huge blatant control ship with little guard, ventilation shaft, water, disease, and in the case of mars attacks...music)
12. Smart computer person to reveal alien flaw and help execute it
13. witty mid combat fight banter (you can shoot with me anytime!, you put out on the first date!, thats 13 elf!)
14. helicopter explosions, Apocalypse now taught me this, if your main character isn't on the chopper, it's gonna blow up
15. america....fuck yeah....really though why are we always the first country to figure out the grand weakness



only thing that was missing was a car sponsorship within the movie, a comedic relief character, any moments of poking fun at itself, and the slow walk into the camera/ away from an explosion/ or slow camera pan around character while they stare off into the distance

EDIT: actually thinking about it a bit more I think they did do the slow pan around the characters at the end before the rescue chopper came.

[Unorthodox]

Went to see it yesterday. I can honestly say, despite the roaring action and special effects i was not entirely impressed with this movie from a story line point of view. The back line for the alien invasion was flawed in many ways and could of been depicted a lot better. I did not feel a connection with any of the characters in the movie as was said above.
Then again, the one liners that where truely god awful left a few chuckles here and there. I can recall the scene with "Dont Worry!!!! Im a Vet!" gaining the most chuckles of them all.

Why an alien invasion force capable of space travel would place the control of all their airs support within the one poorly hidden command centre is beyond me.

Overall generic American alien movie which encapsulated aspects from nearly every Alien movie in the past 10-20 years. All this movie had going for it was the action scenes and special effects.

[Xathian]

Then again, so was Independence Day and that movie kicked ass..

Wow, all credibility of your reviews just went out the window.

[Deleted]

Wow, all credibility of your reviews just went out the window.

How can you not like ID4? It is 100% "what you see is what you get". It does what it promised to and deliver 100% in every aspect.

Sure, it's unrealistic, exaggerated full of clichees and patriotic beyond reason, but it never takes itself too seriously. When I think of "Summer Blockbuster", I think of ID4. Not all films have to be deep and meaningful. If you accept that, then I don't see how you cannot like the film.

[Clockwork Pinkie]

Please don't tell me the humans just suddenly win even though there would be no chance of that even happening.

Yup, as sad as it is that there cant be one "un-happy" ending alien invasion movie. Was still a blast though. It came out at the right time for people like me who love to go to the movies, and hasn't been since Tron came out. I probably would of thought it was terrible if it came out during the summer around movies just like this one. On that note, I'm so pumped for Super 8.

[Sigmar]

Wow, all credibility of your reviews just went out the window.

It's people like you that make me ashamed to be a fan of movies nowadays. Remember when people where allowed to like what they wanted and not be called on it?

Yeah, me neither.

Also what's with this "military propaganda" crap in recent years? It's a crime now to be proud of your military and the people who serve in it?

[DionLight7]

A lot of the weak points described aren't really weak points. Two of which can relate to but then again I come from a military family.

Character development i.e. we cared about no one
-Main-Character wasn’t very likeable/memorable and felt very generic
-No humour whatsoever
-Slightly disappointing aliens leaving many questions unanswered.
-Not that much in the way of special-effects/money shots.

1) Well, the main character is a regular staff sergeant. He's not supposed to be some god-like hero. Whats-his-name even said that after looking at Marines in other movies they weren't portrayed correctly( I.E. Superman-esque). And I can understand that too because in most movies you will always have that one guy who says "We got this! Tally Ho!". The Sergeant in this movie was just being real.

2) The humor in there differs from each person. I laughed at the moments where they were making fun of each other. Again, the movie isn't focused around having laughs. It's about survival.

3) I give you points about the aliens. Again though the movie is based around hours during and after the start of the invasion. Of course we won't know where they came from or what their intention was( fully. I understand that they want to siphon the planets water but how they found our planet is a mystery)

4) I dont know. Seeing air units wildly pop thrusts in the sky or weapons being fired seem.....futuristic. Not to say there could have been more but I didn't look at the movie for polygons.

I give it a 8.5-9/10. This is mostly because this is one of the few movies that actually showed A) civilians helping, B) No romantic scenes( at least over the top), C) Brotherhood moments

[moaradin]

I heard there was an insanely corny moment involving a veterinarian lol.