Battle: Los Angeles

***WARNING***

THE FOLLOWING REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS AND CONTRADICTIONS THEREFORE IT MAYBE UNSUITABLE FOR SOME FUCKS. IT HAS ALSO BEEN SAID THAT IF ANYONE WERE TO READ IT TO JUSTIN BIEBER THEN HE WOULD SPONTANEOUSLY COMBUST.

 ***YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED***

Last week I received the following message via my facebook, it is a reply to my review of 'The Falsification Of Hope'. Please note the date at the bottom of the post.

In short, fucking retarded. How did that trip the the cinema go? Thats if you ever even made it to the cinema, it must be pretty distracting when you keep seeing some unknown person who dresses exactly like you in every reflective surface and does nothing more intimidating that copying your every braindead move. I'll bet your the kind of guy who gets extra scoops of ice cream in the ice cream parlours. No need to worry your pretty little empty head about it though, the parents are probably to blame. Not because of the mental abusiveness or even the beatings you undoubtedly had to take every time you looked up at the dinner table. No, its more than likely the result of how many times they dropped you on your head when they realized how ugly you really were as a baby. That or the amount of nails they hammered into walls using your soft spot. Or inbreeding? I don't know, its not like I know you...or even want to. 

Speaking of things I'd rather not know about, 'Battle: LA'. I wont bother explaining the plot to this filim as any self respecting moron with the brain cells of a monkeys right testicle could work it out based on the thousands of trailers out there. It's 'Independence day' meets 'The Hurt Locker'. Now don't think for one moment that I'm actually comparing this to either of those films because I am not. Despite its hundreds of flaws and its unbearable patriotism I actually quite enjoyed 'Independence Day', the actors are all charming enough to pass it by as exactly what it is and that a silly American pop corn film, it worked. 'The  Hurt Locker' I haven't actually seen, but I know without viewing that it is a much more respectable piece of work than 'Battle: LA', now let me tell you why.

'Battle: LA' is terrible in many ways, firstly the writing, which is about as enjoyable a dog diarrhea dump danish dipped in weasel wank. Almost every line in the film is a stereotypical cliche taken from the big book of american military drivel. Now this would be excusable if the characters were good enough for it to be ignorable, but their not. The character list is a who's who of already tired hard ass soldier types. We have the hard nosed, emotionally scarred anti hero played here by Aaron Eckart who despite the steaming mass of shit he's been presented with actually does a good job and is by far the best thing about the film. After that we have all the usual suspects. The family focused father to be, the love struck soon to be wed one, the aggressive muscle bound black guy, the baby faced new recruit, the tomboy token female and to a lesser extent the one member of the unit who has a little bit of an authority issue. Their all there and  luckily in the very same unit which will be our hosts for the duration of the film. Isn't that just peachy.

Story wise its weak too, nothing more in depth than invasion and extermination. No big twists, no inspired moments of originality. Simply big strong manly types with very big over compensating weaponry taking on very big and not so scary aliens, who appear to have adopted the exact same combat rules and strategies as the american army.

Coming in a close second for terrible things about 'Battle LA' is the way it was shot. I understand the temptation to shooting a movie like this as if it were a documentary but all it does is make the film harder to watch. There is not one single shot of an alien that gives you an idea of what these things look like. This is mostly down to the budget which at a cool $70 mil' isn't really enough for big style special effects. What effects there are will be outdated very quickly and in the long run will damage the film more than it already is. An additional note in relation to the camera work is the shot composition, or more to the point the lack of it. Not one single well designed shot can be found in 'Battle'. Even when the camera gets close it will wobble erratically out the way as if the camera operator was a elderly arthritic man suffering with the later stages of Parkinson's disease while trying to simultaneously ride a mechanical bull which for the purpose of this lengthly analogy happens to be strapped to a paint mixer. By the mid point of the film my eyes were exhausted with having to constantly battle the shoddy camera work. It doesn't even look like a documentary, it just looks like a mess.

Thirdly the film feels like its way too long. Surprising seeing as it comes in well below two hours, but doesn't that just prove how bad "Battle: LA' has to be. Very little story, no character development to way things down or really anything else other than constant action and it still gets bogged down. The reason for this is pretty simple, audiences need a breather in this kind of film or else the entire thing becomes exhausting. It also needs humour, something which the film contains very little of. It tries about four times to make you laugh, but fails every time. It also tries to get all sentimental and sad for one embarrassing beat but that fails spectacularly due to the character that dies being so dimensionally disadvantaged that you can practically see the cardboard edges when he turns sideways. 

As I said back in paragraph four, the only good thing in this film is Eckart, who performs well. His character almost has a personality and at times there was the faintest feeling of something deep inside me that I believe may have been a kind of sympathy. The trouble being however that with such terrible writing and direction Eckart is pretty much left to do all the work and considering the material, he does a good job. Without him the film would be unwatchable, a true testament to his talents.

So would I recommend 'Battle: Los Angeles', yes in fact I would. It is a priceless example of how to mess almost everything up in spectacular fashion. Disaster movies are always simple and always do well because, when all is said and done, their easy to watch. This film however is not and should best be avoided at all costs, unless of course you want to use it as a weapon against an attacking alien race in which case it will show them how insignificant we really are and they'll simply bugger off depressed. 

Battle: Los Angeles gets...

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