Battle: Los Angeles

Battle: Los Angeles takes a done to death premise (alien invasion) and attempts to inject new life into it by following a group of marines as they try to do their job.  While the idea is sound, some of the execution is not up to snuff.  Up until about half way through the movie, I was ready to tell you not to watch it.  

The film starts out pretty slow, introducing us to a ton of characters.  They have small scenes where their names float in front of them, but few of them show enough of a personality in those brief scenes to make them easy to remember.  The film suffers from too many faces to distinguish.  In the latter half of the film, it becomes easier to recognize the characters, as they have had time to perform feats that help them become memorable.  There were a couple times where I thought Jim Parrack (Hoyt from True Blood) had died.  It wasn't a particularly important character, but I knew who the actor was which led me to look for him.  Even though I knew his face and voice, I kept thinking he was dead.  That alone illustrates a problem with following the action.

It appears that the filmmakers wanted to make the film seem more realistic by making the film look as if it was recorded using hand-held cameras.  This is sometimes a positive practice, enhancing what the soldiers are feeling, but it usually just results in confusion for the viewer.  It is already difficult to tell them soldiers apart, and when the camera is shaking, that compounds the problem.

Thus far, you've only heard complaints.  For half of the movie, that was all I was feeling.  The plot continued to follow the most obvious route, and I was getting frustrated.  I don't mind a movie not being perfect, but I was just about ready to give up hope when Battle: Los Angeles surprised me.  The film had started to get interesting, and while we were being exposed to a huge a plot point that I had already called thirty minutes prior, the movie actually elicited an emotional response from me.  That's pretty huge when I had been ready to write the movie off as a waste of my time.  It's even bigger when you consider that it kept me from gloating that I had called said plot point.

If you have some time and want to watch a generic alien invasion flick, give Battle: Los Angeles a try.  It's on Starz on demand right now and possible Netflix.  You get to watch Harvey Dent (better known as Aaron Eckhart) play soldier.  You also get to see Michelle Rodriguez play a tough soldier; that's not so much of a stretch though...  Be prepared to be a little bored for the first half, but the second half pretty much makes up for it.

(Moved from FB - January 9, 2012)