Battle:Los Angeles

“Battle: Los Angeles” is noisy, violent, ugly and stupid. ~Roger Ebert

Any movie that Roger Ebert hates that much has to have something going on for it. One of the problems with watching a lot of movies is that you reach a point where no new movie is ever going to be as good as the movies they made in the Glory Days-whenever you happen to think those glory days might be. Another problem with watching a lot of movies is that very soon realize that its all been done before.

Battle:Los Angeles was a standard issue cgi/sci-fi movie with a lot of very familiar elements. The grizzled old Sargent who picked today to retire. The couple who were going to be married. The tiny band of heroes fighting impossible odds. The fresh out of training Lieutenant destined to die. And so on and so forth. This is basically a 1940s war movie mashed up with Independence Day-and well, Independence Day wasn’t that great a movie.

Battle:LA was still kind of fun for all that. The special effects were very good-I liked the Borgish aliens and their humanoid but totally non-human look. As with all alien invasion films, there is no way in hell we should have won any battles at all, and yet with nothing more than conventional weapons and gritted teeth-we do. The kind of thing that makes you proud to be an American.

The cast was really good. Aaron Eckhart makes a perfect Marine and maybe someone should cast him in a real war movie one of these days.