UK RELEASE DATE - 11th March 2011.

Slack Hawk Down. Aaron Eckhart saves the planet in director Jonathan Liebesman’s passable space invaders flick. Not bad for THE CORE star and it does make a change from Will Smith or Tom Cruise.

BATTLE LOS ANGELES (yes, that’s what the title on the screen says, none of this BATTLE: LA, la, la, la nonsense) is a relentlessly silly and pretty bog standard WAR OF THE WORLDS clone. But with one sole twist. The frantic army combat operations are shown from the soldiers’ points-of-view for a newsreel footage immediacy. The Afghanistan allegories are all present and correct too, you can be sure of that. Obviously THE HURT LOCKER made a big impact on writer Chris Bertolini!  Meteor showers herald the arrival of the latest intergalactic interlopers to eye Earth as a soft target. They want our water for fuel and see aggressive colonization as their only option. As the world’s capital cities crumble on live TV, Los Angeles represents the last stand for mankind. Why? Well, the tentacle creatures’ command control mothership lurks beneath Santa Monica Boulevard. So burnt-out Marine Staff Sergeant Nantz (Eckhart) who led his last troops into instant death now leads a misfit platoon to the main combat zone to kick some alien butt. Along the way he picks up some disposable civilians and expert radar tracker Elena Santos (Michele Rodriguez doing well in the current crop of alien expeditions). Together they take on the unimaginable foe with overly repetitive maneuvers and uber gung-ho banter last heard uttered by John Wayne in THE GREEN BERETS. Who cares about the sketchy characterizations leading to the summation that all Marines must be macho idiots? It’s the high-octane action we’ve come to see and it’s here the TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE BEGNNING director mostly delivers.  Visual power punches come from Californian vistas of disaster, weird mechanical CGI weaponry and UFO craft (inspired by that current sci-fi model of choice, DISTRICT 9) and explosive, if jerky, firepower against constant alien attack. For gore freaks, the slimy autopsy of one alien to figure out how the space intruders can be killed, will hit the Yuk spot.  

There’s an absolutely priceless moment where Eckhart lists all the victims of his last tour of duty to a brother of one of them, and the whole American can-do attitude that suffuses the overdone sincerity is just hilarious. A shame that sharper dialogue and a more focused script would have made a big difference to what as it stands is just another formula nasty close encounter.

Alan Jones.

This web site is owned and published by London FrightFest Limited.
 © London FrightFest Ltd. 2000-2011
_____________________________________________