Battle L.A
Alien invasion? Someone get Jeff Goldblum to an Apple Mac!

On paper Battle L.A is sheer brilliance. The last 20 minutes of District 9 turned into a full film. No pointless tacked on romances or drama, just pure alien bashing. Problem is it just doesn't work. The action just isn't interesting enough and the attempts at making us connect with the characters are laughable to the point I cannot name a single person in the film.

"Whatshisface! NOOOOOOOOOOO! "

But lets not get ahead of ourselves. Battle L.A follows a platoon of US soldiers during an alien invasion. That's about it. No really. Now I'm all for simple entertainment. Not every film has to be Citizen Kane. But this is taking things a bit extreme. There is a quick 20 minutes at the start of the film to establish the characters then straight out run and gun from then on. For star power we have Arron Eckhart, of The Dark Knight fame, as Sergent Micheal Nantz, he is about to retire but is called in to help run the platoon. Michelle Rodriguez also features playing, as she always does, Michelle Rodriguez.
I'll give the good points before I tear into this film without mercy. It gives what you expect. Balls to the wall, ramped up to 11, high octane action, so on and what not. The special effects are brilliant and the CGI impressive. The Aliens are genuinely interesting and we are drip fed what they look like through some clever camera work and direction. The Aliens motives are hinted at from news broadcasts which left me wanting more which is always good. They also aren't an all powerful invincible force. They fight in a conventional manner and if you replaced them with humans there wouldn't be much of a change. Its a refreshing take on Aliens in films.

"Don't probe me! Take the girl instead!"

Now for the bad. As I mentioned the attempt at characterization is just pointlessly bad. You can't give two characters five minutes in a flower shop picking out wedding flowers then expect me to care when they are horribly mutilated to death by alien techno-sorcery. Any real further attempts are stopped when the shooting starts. Problem is it starts early and rarely stops. If everything is constantly shooting, screaming and "Die motherfucker die!" then its hard to stay interested. You need contrast to make the action something to look forward too. The scale is far to small too. Its all infantry fights which is alright until its happened for the nth time. With their budget the director could have thrown couple air battles and a tank that's on the screen for more than a minute to mix things up a bit. There is no plot. Its just marines trying to save civilians and an ending that comes out of nowhere and had nothing to do with the film up until that point. It was just something to give the film an ending and Michelle Rodriguez's character a point. I like the Aliens as I've pointed out but so little is revealed of their motives or even their technology (You never see a hover platform until the end of the film) its more frustrating than interesting at times.

I thought I'd seen everything. Then I saw a missile launcher on legs.

 So. Should you see this film? Honestly, if you haven't already then no. It barely held my interest most of the time despite being the sort of film that I would love. Yes it is a unique take on the Alien invasion genre but it doesn't really do much to justify its self as a film. Its more like a game without the control. So unless all you really, really want is to see is people shooting at aliens and vice versa then don't bother.