Releasing Studio: Sony Pictures/Columbia
Disc/Transfer Specifications: 1080p 2.40:1; Region 1 (U.S.) Release
Video Codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Tested Audio Track: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Rating: PG-13
Director: Jonathan Liebesman
Starring Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Michelle Rodriguez, Bridget Moynahan
IT’S NOT WAR. IT’S SURVIVAL.
PEARLCORDER'S PLOT ANALYSIS:
What? What’s that you say? “Harvey Dent” of
The Dark Knight is playing a platoon-leading staff sergeant Marine charged with the duty of fending off an alien attack on the beaches of California?
Perhaps on paper you don’t buy it, but Jonathan Liebesman’s highly anticipated and much-ballyhooed
Battle: Los Angeles was a refreshingly genuine take on the aliens-invade-Earth genre so commercially glazed over in a thick, heavy syrup via projects like
Independence Day or, in certain aspects,
War of the Worlds. The back of the Blu-ray cover quotes a critic who exclaims this film is like “
Independence Day meets
District 9 – only cooler.” But that’s not accurate. This is indeed – with no doubt –
Black Hawk Down meets
Independence Day for better or worse. Again, this was a film I was eager to see theatrically, but due to personal matters and a hectic work schedule, I missed it like so many other titles I was looking forward to. The hoopla surrounding
Battle: LA was staggering, with blogs upon blogs of insight hitting infinite numbers of Internet “review” and “film discussion” sites; the film was often lumped into that “duality” syndrome, wherein certain films seemed to release together of similar genres, a la
Armageddon and
Deep Impact, being compared to
Skyline which was released prior to
Battle: LA. I didn’t care for
Skyline, and thought this was a much better film, but, again, like so many others I have seen recently, something
still prevents it from being “spectacular” or “ownership worthy” in my opinion.
If you listen to the commentary by the filmmakers and watch some of the behind-the-scenes features on the disc, you’ll learn all about how
Battle: Los Angeles attempted to mix a documentary-style piece of film with a standard Hollywood drama flow – the filmmakers were indeed going for something different with this one, attempting to fuse the nail-biting excitement and pre-alien-attack tensions of
ID4 and like-minded films with a more gritty, serious, “reality” angle, a la an actual Marine troupe going into battle against robotic aliens, seen through their eyes in the tradition of
Black Hawk Down. The result was successful in that way, and instead of gooey, greasy and syrupy tentacles hanging down from these aliens, we get metallic-based organisms which are met by our armed forces with the equal intent of doing machine gun-to-machine gun battle with them. It was a refreshing take on the genre, “true dat” as one of today’s hip hop artists would say.
And, in fact,
Battle: Los Angeles does feel very much like
Black Hawk Down in its raw, rough execution – there’s that gritty, dirty look to the picture as the Marines are ducking alien gunfire and explosions and mud is being thrown into the air; the shaky camera jerks and angles that suggest you’re running right there with the actors…it’s almost as if Ridley Scott was given the green light to attempt a sci fi alien flick, minus Denzel Washington. Instead, we get a good lead performance from Aaron Eckhart, who plays the role of a Marines staff sergeant cool and straight-ahead, with some backup performances by Michelle “Fast and the Furious” Rodriguez and even Michael Pena
World Trade Center). The film goes right for the throat upon starting – we get the perspective of a group of Marines stationed outside Los Angeles watching the news reports of strange meteor showers that are firing down on the Earth’s cities from space. The tension is gathered very nicely here, as we watch news reports – a la
Independence Day, Day After Tomorrow[/i] and even
2012 – about these “cosmic attacks” and how they’re a mystery to everyone around the world, seemingly taking out people, structures and other elements of our planet as they rocket to the ground and explode. What makes this so frightening and effective is that we can actually
imagine something like this happening one day…turning on our TVs and seeing reports from CNN and HLN between episodes of the
Casey Anthony Murder Trial that strange beings have landed on our beaches and in our parks, taking out people with their ray guns and the like. And so, that “energy” built up by this opening sequence, as we watch the news reports of the strange meteor attacks, is extremely effective, mixed with the documentary-style shooting as we follow the confused Marines about their headquarters. What is even more genuinely frightening, however – and I said this about
Independence Day as well, when the White House staff gathers around a TV to watch a news report about the space ships appearing – is the fact that our military powers actually get their intel from news shows and reports before getting it from their own leaders. Can you imagine? Marines and other divisions are made aware of what’s going on with an alien attack not by their own government leaders – but by a report on CNN or elsewhere.
They get the scoop on what’s going down before our government does. That always bothered me.
Soon, reports of these “meteors” turn to excited warnings of attacking “things” on the planet, which have come down from the skies and have begun killing humans and destroying our cities. Eckhart is somehow “reduced,” temporarily, in rank, for the mission of meeting these aliens for a conflict, instead having to take orders from a rookie platoon leader, but who looks to Eckhart for leadership advice anyway.
Battle: Los Angeles then heats up into the mission that its namesake title implies, as we experience, through the eyes of these Marines, a battle between these attacking aliens and our armed forces on the burned-out streets of L.A. As aforementioned, the aliens appear as metallic robot-like beings that have weapons and guns “fused” onto their chassis – it’s almost like
Terminator meets
ID4. The soldiers engage in an all-out gunfight with the beings, shooting their assault rifles at them while the attackers shoot machine gun/laser-like rounds back at them, turning the fogged up, smoked out streets of L.A. into a total war zone (which isn’t much of a stretch to begin with anyway). We eventually meet Michelle Rodriguez’s character, who plays a tough-edged Marine, as well as Michael Pena’s character, who dies at the hands of an alien attack in front of his young son – but the focus always remains on Eckhart and his troops, as the aliens eventually wipe out nearly every Marine in the vicinity, leaving him and a small band of diehard soldiers left to battle the creatures to the death. The sense of “never giving up” amongst the Marines in the film is explored thoroughly, and keeps the narrative’s pace engaging. We also get an out-of-nowhere performance by Bridget Moynahan, who I haven’t seen in anything personally since she played John Cusack’s pretty fiancé in
Serendipity.
Soon, the metallic-like aliens roll out a specialized weapon, which they push down the war-torn L.A. streets towards the Marines, and which shoots incredibly powerful rockets of some sort, instantly destroying whoever is in the way of the weapon. As day turns into night during this campaign, Eckhart and the others realize they must find the source of what’s controlling the other “drones” – there must be a central brain for these aliens (just like the “mother ship” in
ID4) and they eventually stumble upon it beneath the ground. Massive and nearly the size of a city, this contraption rises from beneath the ground – and one must wonder how the aliens got these beneath our feet, much like in
War of the Worlds – as the Marines figure out a way to destroy it, thereby crippling the other alien contraptions being controlled by it. Meanwhile, all around the world, the aliens are destroying major cities like London, as they do in all these flicks, but once the small group of American Marines figures out how to bring these suckers down, they pass the word along…does this sound familiar?
CONTINUED BELOW...
