After nearly a decade of angling for serious political import, the alien invasion blockbuster has finally come home, ditching any implications of serious social issues in favor of hand-to-hand, relatively constant firefights between humans and their alien nemeses. This would be a cause to rejoice if Battle: Los Angeles was an at all engaging film, but it isn’t. It aims to provide as ‘realistic’ an impression of physical battle as has yet been conveyed in a science fiction film (and uses as much noise and fire as it feels is necessary to do it), but by calling out for your attention as relentlessly and obnoxiously as it does, it manages to have the complete opposite effect: that of stifling, constrictive apathy, even when the fate of the world itself is at stake. Battle: Los Angeles could have been an exhiliharating ride, but it’s almost impossible to get on.
Sergeant Nantz (Aaron Eckhart) has something of a shady past; he’s distrusted by the rest of the men at Pendleton Marine Base due to the recent deaths of men under his command in Iraq, and his age is starting to show. But fortunately, that’s about to be over, as he's planning into a civilian life; that is, until alien attack ships gather off the coasts of several major countries of the world, not moving inland because they use water for fuel. Suddenly, he is thrust back into combat, leading 2nd Lt. William Martinez (Ramon Rodriquez), TSgt. Elena Santos (Michelle Rodriguez), and various random civilians (Michael Pena, Bridget Moynahan) through the wreckage of a Los Angeles already well under attack, only to have to try to get them all out again before the Air Force launches its counter strike against the invading forces.
For as prominently featured as it is in the film’s advertising (and, you know, the title), Battle: Los Angeles never really feels like a Los Angeles movie. Though various landmarks are mentioned by name, the terrain that the marines keep traveling across feels consistently indistinct, as a pile of burning rubble by the beach kind of looks like a pile of burning rubble downtown. Use of locations is rarely a dealbreaker in films, but here, the never-ending backdrop of beige destruction serves only to underscore just how lacking Battle is on almost every visual level, from its totally incoherent battle scenes (each subsequent encounter with the ETs makes you long even more for the calm, disciplined camera-work of The Blair Witch Project) to its lack of compelling creature design (their physiology and social structure is barely explored; humans are pretty disposable, but God help the invasion movie that doesn’t pay some attention to its aliens). It also forces you to realize that as much shooting, running, and yelling as the characters are doing, they never seem to be getting anywhere, because they aren’t. Their strategy throughout the film is pretty murky, and never gives off the heat of people preparing for a major battle.
Even if its clear from the opening beats that Battle: LA isn’t interested in making you feel anything other than a jolt of testosterone, the sheer insistence of its ‘gritty’ aesthetic makes you feel like it was going for something pretty raw. But if there’s a lesson to be learned here, it’s this: foley gunfire and nearly lack absence of exposition aren’t going to make people feel as if they’re experiencing an actual battle. It’s probably impossible for any film to, which is why there are monuments and support groups for veterans who actually went to war, and not just people who saw Black Hawk Down. The biggest cliché in film writing is to complain that ‘they just don’t make ‘em like they used to’, particularly because it isn’t true; it’s just that certain trends go in and out of style, and those trends either work well for a genre or they don’t. If Battle: Los Angeles is any indication, the alien invasion should be put on the shelf for a few years, at least until technology exists to make something like this film legitimately interactive. But compare this to Independence Day, already 15 years old and no one’s idea of subtle. Even if the characters weren’t really any deeper than they are here, Roland Emmerich was patient enough to set up exactly what would happen, and give you just enough time to wait for it while appreciating the impressive firepower of the invading force. Here, director Jonathan Liebesman seems to intent on moving as fast and hitting you as hard as possible that it’s impossible to appreciate or even engage with any of it, and the whole experience ends up being not dissimilar to watching someone else play a video game.
"Battle: Los Angeles" opens March 11, 2011 and is rated PG13. Action, Sci-Fi. Directed by Jonathan Liebesman. Written by Christopher Bertolini. Starring Michael Pena, Ramon Rodriguez, Cory Hardrict, Gino Anthony Pesi, Ne Yo, James Hiroyuki Liao, Noel Fisher, Adetokumboh Mcormack.
