Battle: Los Angeles

Take one part Black Hawk Down and one part Independence Day, add a dash of advanced special effects, then bake in the "Cliché Oven" for about 2 hours season with bad script and shitty story then serve to American youth looking for a career in the military... I call it "Battle: à L.A. mode".
Battle: LA is just riddled with poor script writing and sub-par acting. The only thing that really made this movie worth sticking around for was the pretty decent special effects and "action". Which in the end is all that really brought you to come see this movie anyway, right? I now know why there was no talking in the trailer for this movie.



Basic Plot:
Aliens have decided to come to Earth to steal our resources and to eliminate the population. A group of Marines are sent into the part of the city that the aliens control to rescue a few people that couldn't escape the area (which is due to be destroyed via the air force). Due to some alien interference they have to make a run for it out of the blast zone on foot/big city bus....Will they make it out in time?  Who cares...

Thumbs Up:

•  The effects were pretty great but in an age were effects don't seem to be the "big deal" anymore and story and scripts taking a back seat to them, it's not all that impressive.
• We see lots of ways to blow shit up. From both the humans and their grenades to the aliens and their walking water powered frog-like rocket launcher?
• It is 1 hour 56 minuets, so not a long TV show.

Thumbs Down:

• As I said above the effects are pretty good however the movie is filmed "handy-cam" style and just full of lens flare thus making it super easy to mask any real detail in the graphics.
• The script was just a mess of cliché non-sense that just made me want to laugh for most of the movie...so I did, along with most of the other people in the theater.
• Being a veterinarian does not make you an expert in alien anatomy!
• Acting in this was just as good as the script made it. There are no real "big names" in this movie but I have to feel that the actors were very limited in what they could do based on the poor scripting.
• The military aspect of the movie just made no sense at all. Accompanied by my brother (in the army) and my basic knowledge of the military, I can't really see the elite unit such as the Marines just walking down the street in a big group just waiting for one little fireball to take them all out. Or to hot wire a giant BRIGHT ORANGE city bus and drive at 15 MPH hitting everything in your path (more "action"?) and not have every alien in the area shooting at you?????
• It didn't really have any ending... Perhaps Battle: Toronto will be out next year?
• It was 1 hour 56 minuets long.

To sum this epic movie experience up I have to say if you are looking for about 2 hours of ways to see things explode ("action") and see how the military doesn't use common sense, with dialog that makes you laugh at the most serious times then check out Battle: Los Angeles. If you have the internet... Wait to download it... Legally of course.

2 Stars