Saturday 12 March 2011

Battle Los Angeles

Arriving several years too late for anyone to care about an alien invasion movie but not late enough to avoid unfavourable comparisons with the genre's most recent standout entries, Battle Los Angeles has to pull something pretty special out of its extra-terrestrial egg-sac for anyone to give a shit about it. Predictably, it fails to do so on almost every conceivable level.

It's the story of a crack unit of Hollywood special effects technicians who set out to destroy Los Angeles (presumably New York was busy that day), and a heroic team of nondescript US Marines armed only with cursory, minimal backstories and incessant captions to remind them where they are in the plot.
After the obligatory fifteen minute introductory scenes, there's some kind of Battle in Los Angeles that goes on for nearly two hours, pausing briefly once or twice to allow a marauding horde of clichés in and to randomly shift the action between daytime and nighttime depending on how much of the budget had been used up. The final showdown sees our heroes firing lines like "We're fighting for our country, goddammit!" and "Let's take back Los Angeles!" at the boring aliens in their mothership stolen from District 9 and, well, see if you can guess what happens.

With nothing to say about or add to its already overcrowded sub-genre, Battle Los Angeles is that rare thing: a film that makes you pine for the subtlety of Roland Emmerich. So save your money, dig out your Independence Day DVD and if Battle Los Angeles makes enough money to warrant another episode in the aliens-invade-coastal-metropolis franchise, get ready for Battle Cleethorpes: The Fight For Pier 39.

5 comments :

  1. Battle Cleethorpes: The Fight For Pier 39 - GENIUS!!! You've made me laugh out loud again x

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  2. Has anyone got the stomach for disaster movies having seen thousands of cars, boats, houses, trains, bridges and factories being tossed around in Japan like swill in a bucket? The most deranged CGI artist or film villain would never come up with the real life disaster we have all just seen with runaway nuclear power plants ready to blow for extra tension.

    Just out of interest, am I correct in thinking the space invader's ship from another galaxy crashed out of control because none of the crew bothered to download the latest updates for the Windows 7 system in charge of navigation?

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  3. No Tony, you just don't do your homework. They land in the water to decelerate. Cute little stab at Windows though.

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  4. I gotta say that you are not the brightest person in the world. Specially since Battle Los Angeles made 100 Million. Says a lot about your IQ doesn't it.

    OH and Tony Cox See the movie before you saying anything. Makes you look as stupid as the guy/gal that wrote the article.

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  5. How can I be the brightest person in the world when there are geniuses out there saying things like "See the movie before you saying anything"?

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