Plot:The film begins 12 August 2011, when mysterious objects thought to be meteorites crash into Earth’s oceans near several major cities. These objects are revealed to be spacecraft, containing hostile alien forces. Los Angeles is one of the first cities to be attacked. The U.S. military arrives in Los Angeles to defend against alien ground forces and assist in the evacuation of civilians, in preparation for a bombing campaign. Among the military’s forces are Michael Nantz (Aaron Eckhart), a U.S. Marine Staff Sergeant who had planned to retire, and his new platoon from Echo Company, 2nd battalion, 5th Marine regiment.
Nantz is assigned to the platoon immediately before the battle. He had previously led another platoon in Iraq, which suffered heavy casualties in an incident that was supposedly Nantz’s fault. One of the Marines killed in this incident was the brother of Corporal Jason Lockett (Cory Hardrict), a member of Nantz’s new platoon.
The Platoon Commander, 2nd Lieutenant William Martinez (Ramón Rodríguez), attends a briefing at FOB (Forward Operating Base) Santa Monica in Los Angeles. First platoon’s mission is to rescue civilians from a police station with a three-hour time limit before the Air Force bombs the area. They are ambushed by aliens multiple times and suffer casualties. They also encounter a group of U.S Army soldiers from the 40th Infantry Division, including an Air Force intelligence Technical Sergeant Elena Santos (Michelle Rodriguez). Eventually, the combined team reaches the police station, finding five civilians inside. A helicopter arrives and attempts to evacuate some of the wounded Marines, but it is destroyed by the aliens upon takeoff.
Impressions: I don’t have the energy to really type up impressions about Battle: LA. It’s really a Black Hawk Down version of Independence Day. For what it was, it was enjoyable. Some people complained it was too long, my complaint is it was too short. The film should’ve been like 2.5 hours and just went balls out.
It does make Independence Day look utterly stupid. For the longest time I thought Independence Day was good fun, but comparatively from a realistic standpoint of what could possibly happen if an alien invasion occurred, it just never dawned on me to watch Independence Day in that matter. I finally have the kid glasses off.
Battle: LA is a cliche war movie, but it’s what you expect. I didn’t appreciate the cinematography as much in respect to the close up jittering, it’s just fucking hard to follow the camera with a documentary style shaky cam. I get it’s trying to be stylistic, but it doesn’t work all the time. You can tell there is a slight change in the approach as the latter half of the film finally gives more panning shots than the close ups. It’s a half failed attempt, but thank god this film wasn’t in 3D. The choice of camera for the documentary grain works fantastic and when it works, it really works. I’m just complaining more about the directorial decisions for capturing things as they were. The angles should’ve just been harder and sharper.
Mainly I thought this film could’ve been bigger. It is the first of the blockbuster films this year and it made me wanting more. It falls in between the real gritty war movie and the really flashy over the top alien invasion type of film. It ends up not being enough for me because it ends up falling in the mid-tier category. A movie influenced by other movies and you notice it. I did like it though. In recent films, District 9 did a better job of the mid-tier film. That was more well-rounded.
Battle: LA, with how it presents it’s characters, has pseudo character development but it could’ve done a lot more in pushing this element of the film. A whole 30 more minutes, much like Black Hawk Down did it. It could’ve been a character biopic and an alien invasion film. Because we were just following a platoon in some ways what we were seeing on screen felt confined rather than bigger picture. In Black Hawk Down, you’d see us following a platoon as well, but Ridley Scott would have a long camera shot of where this platoon was say located in an alleyway, we’d see them visibly down the road and aerial shots as well. So we were left with an understanding of what was going on in a location perspective. It’s one thing that lacks in Battle: LA. People say it plays like a video game and yes it does in some manner, but more so the flaw of it is based on the movie actually plays out in a level by level storyboard. It’s almost like watching someone play a video game or how they could be playing it. It’s an odd example and this film I think forgets it’s a film and doesn’t take advantage of certain things when it could.
I found myself immediately watching Black Hawk Down and Independence Day for a compare and contrast right after the movie. Battle: LA is a modern war movie with aliens in a realistic manner. First of its kind, great potential but missed by being in-between. More curious is it only cost 70m to make, so hopefully we see more in the future. Like a Battle: London with Jason Statham.
