Thursday, March 10, 2011

There was a time, a golden age you might say, when war films, unabashed military-lovin’ cinema about war, was the norm. The military was a romanticized force out to protect the world and its beleaguered people and we the cinema-going public were ardent and earnest supporters. Big explosions, cigar-chewing soldiers, a clear ideal with a clear moral message - this what the war films of yester-year (to a degree) promised. Blame it on three decades of worldwide conflict, blame it on the exposed truths about the American military complex, blame it on my latent cynicism raging to the surface, but pro-military films just don’t incite the rah-rah-lets-go-Army sentiments of the past. Battle: Los Angeles, the newest military-versus-aliens big budget blockbuster to ooze out of Hollywood isn’t a bad film, in truth its a flashily made, surprisingly well-acted, tense bit of action-sci-fi, I just can’t muster the gusto to be excited by a film about military forces killing invaders.

Review - Battle: Los Angeles

There is barely five seconds of film on screen before Battle: Los Angeles has already introduced us to the burning image of "The City of Angels" that will be its calling card. Meteors have appeared and then crashed in to the oceans of the coast of nearly every major city in the world, and from these crashes, brutal squads of well-armed, dome-headed aliens have begun an invasion/massacre of the entire world. A squadron of fresh-faced Marines are introduced - most importantly Staff Sergeant Michael Nantz (Aaron Eckhart), a decorated soldier weeks away from retirement, the phantom of a mission gone bad hovering over him - but their names, their back-stories, their individual characteristics matter little. These are Marines, they love their countries, their families, and most of all their fellow Marines and they are about to tested for the very first time. Toss in a few extraneous civilians for dramatic reassurance, slap on a swelling score, and that’s the film - Marines fighting aliens across the ravaged battlefield of a charred Los Angeles.

As an action film, even as a science-fiction film, it’s pretty good. Eckhart, talented bastard that he is, brings a level of talent to his sorely underwritten role that elevates a few key scenes of military bravado and rah-rah leadership far above the sappy dreck they might have existed as. The camera-work is tight and shaky, and as the formidable alien presence bombards our camouflaged heroes, time and time again, there’s a true threat of danger lurking in the air. You might not care, or remember, each character individually, but there’s a general feeling of worry that these young men, and woman, might catch a flaming alien bullet in the head. Sure, the film at times feels like a promotional video game for the Marine Corps, but I left this movie suffused with the kind of adrenalized glow a good action film paints you with, but with any fragment of thought about the deeper meaning of the film, this glow quickly faded. In the modern landscape of military engagement, a film that follows a trigger-happy group of soldiers gunning down "foreigners" in the street without remorse or second-thought, endorses a way of thinking and acting on a greater scale that I just can’t agree with. Battle: Los Angeles succeeds as the first of the new crop of big budget actioneers, but fails to draw any attention the message it wears so clearly on its sleeve.

- Noah Sanders -



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