I never saw Battle: Los Angeles in theaters so after watching this Blu-ray I was left wondering what went wrong. So I revisited the almost unanimously praised first trailer. Now I get it. The trailer was effective because it had absolutely no dialogue. It makes a lot of sense because the film looks great and sounds even better, but this script is just embarrassing.
The film opens by wasting an obscene amount of time establishing the back story of each character. We spend no more than one minute with each of the 15 or so supporting characters, as if the writer (Christopher Bertolini) felt obligated to give us just one reason to care about each of them in case they were to die later on.
Please, we know Marines have a home life. Yet, this film never allows these characters to become more than their stock labels of “the virgin” or “father-to-be.” They would have been better served using the Black Hawk Down method of forgoing character development all together since they were admittedly aping that film’s style anyway.
Outside Aaron Eckhart, the remaining cast members become mere space fillers once the battle starts anyway. Their faces blend together amongst all the shaky-cam mayhem, and they’re left to grunt the occasional cringe-worthy line such as the celebratory “New York represent!” after hot-wiring a bus. Bridget Moynahan shows up as a civilian bringing some annoying incessantly screaming kids into the picture (in case the constant explosions and gunfire weren’t noisy enough) and recites lines like “Maybe I can help… I’m a veterinarian” as Eckhart and Co. dissect an alien in an attempt to learn how to kill it.
Eckhart says during one of the disc’s featurettes that “if the audience doesn’t believe that we’re about to die in every moment of this movie, then we haven’t done our job.” That’s part of the problem. Sure, some of the Marines die, but you never get the feeling that Eckhart’s character is in danger. His back story tells us he got some of his men killed on his last tour so we know he’s going to get his redemption here.
Michelle Rodriguez says “I’ve never seen a documentary-style alien movie before, and that’s how this was shot.” Um, isn’t that exactly what District 9 was? That’s Battle: Los Angeles‘s M.O. It rips off bits and pieces from far better films, throws them together and tries to pass itself off as original. The film, like all of its characters, is completely devoid of personal identity. Generic aliens. Stock characters. And no Will Smith to be found. It doesn’t even offer a decent look at what these aliens really look like.
The disc’s supplements are limited to a number of seven short featurettes that total about an hour in length. They cover a variety of topics, such as the actors’ “Bootcamp” and “Creating L.A. in LA,” but mostly focus on various cast and crew talking about how “kick-ass” and “hardcore” the movie is. I quickly grew tired of hearing actors preaching “realism” and talking about how they “get the feeling that they’re at war” and “figured out what it means to be a Marine” just because they went through a few days of movie bootcamp.
The disc offers demo-worthy audio and video, prompting me to recommend this as a buy if, for some reason, you happen to already be a fan of the film. I just can’t imagine why you would be. Otherwise, it’s a rental at best.
This is an impressively dumb movie. If it taught me anything, it’s that I shouldn’t expect Wrath of the Titans to be any better than Clash. Just because Liebesman has graduated from mediocre horror fare like Darkness Falls and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning to bigger budget features doesn’t mean he’s making better movies. How did he get these jobs anyway?
Rest assured, that question is answered in the disc’s “Directing the Battle” feature. Turns out he scored the gig by putting together an effects reel that he presented to the studio. I will say that the guy knows how to direct an intense action sequence. Here’s hoping he gets a decent story to work from next time.
