Battle: Los Angeles

I am somewhat at a loss that actual people (talented people, for that matter) were involved in the making of Battle: Los Angeles. Here is a movie so shallow, so mechanical, and so completely devoid of emotion or purpose that it can barely be considered entertainment. It is a two hour endurance test of non-stop special effects, explosions, and actors screaming nonsensical lines - Sound and fury without any purpose. You know your movie is in trouble when the most insightful dialogue is coming from the actors posing as CNN anchors who show up on random TV monitors throughout the film.

The movie, directed by Jonathan Liebesman (who previously graced the world with horror "classics" like Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, and Darkness Falls), seems to have been shot as if it was intended to be as obnoxious as possible. The camera is constantly moving and shaking about, even when it doesn't have to, and the editing is fast and spastic. Images flash before our eyes before they have time to register, making it hard to follow, much less care. Not that the filmmakers expect us to care about what's going on. The characters are interchangeable in just about every way, except skin color, or sometimes sex. The cast includes some stock military cliches (the guy with the troubled past, the one with the pregnant wife, the Latino, the Asian, the black guy), and some equally stock civilian characters who eventually tag along, including two spunky little kids who I think have less than ten lines of dialogue in the whole film, and basically just stand there, looking spunky and occasionally scared. It must have taken a superhuman effort on the part of the filmmakers to not throw a cute dog in the group for comic relief.

The one character who does stand out is Michael Nantz, the head of the military platoon. It's not that he's better written than the other characters, it's just that he's played by Aaron Eckhart. What he's doing in this movie is between him and his agent, and I'm sure it will be talked about in long, sad conversations for years to come. His character is the quiet, square-jawed hero type who "has a past", and comes equipped with a slew of "never give up, never surrender" speeches when his men are down. As the film opens, he's getting ready to step down from his position in the military, but then reports of strange meteors coming toward Earth start popping up on TV. More ominous signs - The meteors appear to be metallic, and decrease in speed before crashing into the sea. Moments later, alien foot soldiers wearing robotic suits with guns attached to their arms (Not very practical, especially if you have to scratch an itch.) rise from the water, and start laying waste to Los Angeles. Why are they here? The movie gives us no answer, other than a TV journalist theorizing that they are colonizing Earth, and have come for our water supply. Thanks for that.

Nantz and his men are introduced in an extended sequence, where we see the character's name in a subtitle at the bottom of the screen, accompanied by a 30 second intro that basically tells us everything we need to know about that particular person. Then the aliens start attacking, and all attempts at storytelling fly out the window. Battle: Los Angeles becomes a non-stop sensory bombardment that never once comes close to a point or a dramatic theme. It's all action, all noise, all explosions, all the time. When the movie does slow down long enough to allow Nantz and his fellow survivors to talk to each other, the dialogue is so banal as to be laughable. To call these characters one dimensional would imply that they actually have dimensions. Most of the time, they're running down non-descript streets and ruined buildings that don't once give us the feeling that they're in Los Angeles. There are no famous landmarks or settings to be seen. All we get are some fuzzy shots of the aliens jumping out like targets in a video game.

What happened to the wonder in Sci-Fi? What happened to visiting strange worlds, meeting alien cultures, and imagination? This movie is an insult to all of that. The aliens exist to be shot down, the human characters exist merely to bark orders and shoot the aliens, and everything looks so chintzy and ugly. I mean, just look at the spaceships the aliens fly around in. They look like flying piles of scrap and junk. How could they fly around in those things without having other alien civilizations laugh at them? How can the Earthlings take them seriously when they look like bargain-basement video game designs, and fly around in something that looks like it was glued together?

Alas, I fear I am putting more thought to this movie than the filmmakers did. This is a mindless film devoid of joy, purpose, and wonder. It exists for one purpose only - To win the top spot its opening weekend, then fade into obscurity where it belongs. At that, I'm sure it will be successful. Congratulations, filmmakers. See what you can achieve when you set your sights so low?

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