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Summary
Battle: Los Angeles is a war movie first, science fiction second. It’s got it all: a burned-out retiring sergeant who gets drawn back in because, dammit, the Marines need him; the guy who’s about to get married; the guy who’s still a virgin; the guy suffering from shell shock and who just might crack; the newbie officer with a lot of book learning who you just know is going to freeze under pressure and have to be shepherded by that burned-out sergeant, who learned his lessons on the battlefield… and so much more. There’s not a moment in this movie you haven’t seen before–the only twist is that the enemy is alien, so whatever shred of concern you might have for raining heavy artillery on a fellow human being can be cheerfully cast aside. But clichés are clichés because they are efficient and effective, and despite the profound familiarity of Battle: Los Angeles, there’s no denying the movie rips along (though two-thirds of the way through you may have forgotten who was the virgin and who was the shell-shocked guy–but really, does it matter?). The look owes a debt toDistrict 9, a hand-held, vérité grittiness, with most of the CGI carefully given a dingy, dirty look so that it meshes with the urban landscape. Aaron Eckhart (The Dark Knight) does an impressive job of spitting out ham-fisted dialogue like he really, really means it, while the rest of the cast is suitably generic. This is an unrepentant love letter to the military; many viewers, faced with the unsettling chaos and moral ambiguities of real wars, will find this mythologizing not only soothing, but even moving.
–Bret Fetzer from Amazon.com
Battle: Los Angeles (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Review
Wow. Just Wow. This movie was done so well. I am one for some violence but there is a limit to it. I cannot watch gruesome movies with blood and guts (like Saw) and I am not one for those really creepy movies (like Alien). I was not initially interested in this movie but my mom had gone to the theatre to see this movie the day it came out. She never really does that, especially for a battle/alien movie. She was raving about it and I was like ‘yeah yeah, probably another one of those stupid battle movies – there are already enough of those.’ But then my mom got my father to order the movie. The day that it arrived was the day that it was watched. I really was not interested because I had seen Independence Day and I had a feeling that it was going to be like that. It was kind of similar in a few aspects but mostly I was wrong. This movie was amazing!!!!! It is in like my top 10 (along with Matrix – review coming soon.)
Yeah there was a lot of violence and there was an extremely high body count, but this was not blood and guts. There was some blood but nothing too bad. There were a part where they had to dissect an alien and that was a little gross but otherwise this movie was really well done. It seems to have a mix of Transformers, Alien, Independence Day in it.
But I have to say this. I am going to use Transformers as my comparison movie as many people have seen it. In Transformers the army people acted all valiantly and acted as if they did this by regular routine. You only got a few glimpses of some people being afraid. This movie is the complete opposite. It was like a documentary in the sense that you really saw the fear in these soldiers as they were doing their duty. You saw that they really did not want to go out and face the enemy but they knew that they had to as they were the only people who could do it. Then at one time they had a lot of pressure on them and you saw that they were afraid but you saw the determination in their eyes and you saw that they had to do it.
This movie was quite sad in a few parts because how some of the people died. These people, these soldiers, gave up their lives to save civilians. Took bullets (or blast rays or whatever the guns were that the aliens used) for civilians as it was their duty.
I also have to say that the trailer is deceiving. It looks like it was going to be filmed in “shaky cam” but it really was not. There was a few moments in the beginning but then it really was filmed normally and anything that was kind of shaky was not noticeable. If anything, it added to the effect of the movie.
This movie was really amazing. The filmography was done extremely well. The graphics were done extremely well too. This movie did have quite a lot of graphic (not in the Transformers sense) as they did have to make many building be destroyed and they did have to have theses ships of the aliens.
This is a movie for older teens. I recommend this movie for 14 year olds and up as it is too violent for people younger. I say that guys would definitely love this movie because there was so many different types of guns. Rocket launchers, machine guns, sub machine guns, hand grenades, C4 (not a gun but it makes a “BOOM”). Don’t know if these are what they are called but just throwing some names out there (not a gun expert) 🙂
So hope that you enjoy and just to leave you off, I wanted to share two of my favorite short conversations from the movie. It definitely did have its funny parts. These aren’t my words and no offense is intended. Just he context in which they were used made them so funny.
LCpl. Richard Guerrero: So what’s your take on this, specs?
Cpl. Kevin Harris: I don’t know, extraterrestrial?
Cpl. Lee Imlay: You mean like from space?
Cpl. Nick Stavrou: No Imlay, from Canada.
and…
SSgt. Michael Nantz: Stavro, Harris, the lieutenant needs recon on a bus. If it runs, bring it back here… Either of you know how to hotwire a bus?
Cpl. Kevin Harris: Um, Stvrou can. He’s from Jersey, sir.
-both from IMDB.com
