The only really commendable feature of the invaders-from-wherever bombast fest Battle: Los Angeles is its absolute disinclination to even try to be “satirical.” E.g., there are no gags in this picture involving, say, a coked-up Hollywood player meeting alien doom whilst screaming into his cel phone as he recklessly tools down the Pacific Coast Highway. On the other hand, the film completely squanders the location-specific destruction opportunities that its setting hands the filmmakers: no Frank Gehry buildings are destroyed, Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers style. Even the Hollywood sign goes not just untouched, but entirely unseen. What is less commendable still is the tiresome “sincerity” of its semper-fi would-be button-pushing. Don’t get me wrong, I like a good support-our-troops picture as much as the next guy, even if the next guy is John Nolte; I’m a big Sands of Iwo Jima man myself. But this film’s brand of wide-eyed earnestness is such that Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor looks like Platoon by comparison. Okay, that’s a bit of a stretch, but still…
Anyway, that’s Michelle Rodriguez above, playing a, whaddya know, badass female Air Force officer person, and that should tell you something about the creative effort that went into the film’s casting. In any event, my further thoughts on Battle: Los Angeles, for MSN Movies, are here.
The as-dire, no, in fact, MORE dire, Mars Needs Moms also opens today. My review of that very unfortunate misfire is here.
The Russian title for MARS NEEDS MOMS translates as SECRET OF THE RED PLANET, which gives it a slightly more welcoming 1950s commie witchhunt sort of vibe. But I’m sure it’ll be terrible just the same.
The Russian title of THE KING’S SPEECH was the far better THE KING SPEAKS!, btw.
“Sands of Iwo Jima” – terribly underrated. This song.…terrific.
http://goo.gl/tLnmn
Michelle Rodriguez is bad-ass!
Actually, Michelle Rodriguez isn’t playing a Air Force Officer…she is playing an Air Force E‑6 (as shown by the 5 stripes on her arm) or a Technical Sergeant which is an enlisted airman.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Air_Force_enlisted_rank_insignia
Well, Mark, as her character explains in the movie, she had to take that uniform off of a dead E‑6 after an ejector-seat mishap.
Okay, no, that’s not true. What is true is that I wasn’t counting her stripes while watching the film, which only really goes out of its way to emphasize the Eckhart character’s status as staff sergeant.
It’s too bad Hollywood can’t make a good work from something by Berkley Breathed, but with Simon West directing, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.
“That Dude Michael Peña always plays!” – Like in OBSERVE AND REPORT? Cool!
I read an interview with Michelle Rodriguez somewhere recently, and she sounds as bored with the tough chick thing as you are. I don’t know how her agent feels about it, but she’s trying to get a comedy she’s written off the ground.
Guess who LIKES the film for its militaristic earnestness…
nypress.com/article-22205-saving-sergeant-nantz.html
The biggest doozies are the last two sentences of the second paragraph; I suspect our man will be reappraising The Green Berets next (for all that, I support the troops).
Didn’t we see this movie a few months ago, when it was called “Skyline”? And in previous years, when it was called “Independence Day” and then “Black Hawk Down”?
I hate movie soldiers with a passion.
What I would like pointed out is the tip of the cap to the technologically challenged of the world as the Marines are SAVED BY A LAND-LINE! Boomers and Greatest Generationers should revel in their Luddite ways since the slimy, techno-loving aliens can’t hack into land lines!
Also you could throw in a dash of “Speed” too what with that big set-piece involving driving a bus around all the while the out-of-his-element Marine Lt. had a fully backpack of dynamite too!
If I may segue from a cinematic disaster to an actual one…
I was working in Japan back when the 1995 Kobe earthquake happened (though nowhere near it) — the city’s reconstruction was subsequently shown in the 48th and final ‘Tora-san’ movie — and I thought that devastation was bad enough! The recent quake and tsunami have been even more terrible, and what with nuclear overheating and supplies running low, blackouts too, things aren’t over yet.
I urge everybody to do or donate what they can.
Screw you Glenn Kenny. I’ll never read your advice on a movie again. I enjoyed Battle: Los Angeles.
Oh yeah?!?! Well…you…I oughta…[etc.]
Was anyone else bothered by the inane plotting on the part of the aliens? I could accept that their air force arrived a little late or that they, being a completely other kind of alien race, still had centralized command, control and communications (as they must have learned aliens do from watching our TV broadcasts). But what stuck out like the sorest thumb was exactly how any of their plan of land invasion and population eradication made any sense at all given their objective was supposedly our H20. They could have simply plopped a giant straw into the Arctic ocean, started sucking and sat back and waited for the U.N. to notice and then do nothing about it, à la Libya. At one point, a news commentator even remarks that the sea levels are already falling–in less than one day!–so don’t tell me the countries of the world would have been able to do anything to stop a much stealthier water-stealing invasion before it was over. I’m not asking for much, just a line or two of bullshit exposition to “explain” this lacuna of logic. It’s not like they wanted some unobtanium that was buried beneath the Staples Center. Now that would have been a good reason to torch Los Angeles. I should have trusted Glenn on this one, but I wanted to see for myself.
Oh, man, Nolte’s review of this is AWESOME.