Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
3/12/11
The Roland Emmerich/Dean
Devlin alien invasion extravaganza Independence Day is one of my
favorite movies: it's entirely possible that a purer engine of sci-fi
entertainment has never been constructed. And what it does, it does
so well that it's hard for any subsequent movie about a full-fledged military
invasion of the Earth by creatures from another world to do anything but
riff upon it. With Battle: Los Angeles, writer Christopher
Bertolini and director Jonathan Liebesman work some mild changes on the
ID4 plot, but mostly shift the focus and the style. Unlike
the Clinton 90's, when Hollywood was enamored with two-fisted US Presidents,
Battle: LA lets the troops on the ground solve our infestation
problem, and it follows their struggle with a single-minded focus and immediacy
that recalls Black Hawk Down. The result is quite effective,
a rousing, exciting and suspenseful ride powered by a wonderful lead performance
from Aaron Eckhart. It also quite accidentally manages to be the
most effective cinematic celebration in decades of the aspects of the military
that people find worthy of admiration. When you're using your courage,
honor and determination to save Los Angeles from aliens, the filmmakers
never have to stop to make sure their sentiments don't sound like a political
endorsement. Battle: Los Angeles won't offer you much
you haven't seen before, but those familiar elements are skillfully combined,
resulting in an off-season event movie of the highest order.
Marine Staff Sergeant Michael
Nantz (Aaron Eckhart) has decided not to re-enlist following his current
tour, traumatized by a mission in which he was rewarded for valor but many
of his men died. He's suddenly recalled to active duty when meteors
begin falling from the sky around the world, decelerating before hitting
the water. He's assigned to a new platoon led by 2nd Lieutenant William
Martinez (Ramon Rodriguez), including Corporal Jason Lockett (Cory Hardrict),
whose brother was one of the men who lost his life under Nantz's command.
As they fly in to assist the evacuation of the shoreline, the meteors start
to hit and disgorge an alien assault force. Because no alien air
presence has been felt, an air strike is planned three hours later, by
which time the platoon is to have rounded up as many civilians caught behind
the battle lines as possible and returned them to the Forward Operating
Base where they'll be safe. But things immediately start going south
when the aliens do turn out to have ships, which blow all evac helicopters
out of the sky. As the platoon fights its way across town, Nantz
looks for weaknesses in the invaders with the help of two stragglers they've
picked up, veterinarian Michele Martinez (Bridget Moynahan) and Air Force
Tech Sergeant Elena Santos (Michelle Rodriguez). While they struggle
to get the civilians to safety, it becomes rapidly clear that if these
soldiers can't find and take out the central machine coordinating the attack,
Los Angeles will be lost, and the rest of the world along with it.
The problem with war movies
is that war sucks: the opponents of any military force are people
too, of course, and the human toll of battles to end fights politicians
picked with each other is as senseless as it is heartbreaking. So
the only way our modern worldview can be reconciled with a rah-rah ass-kicking
action extravaganza build around combat is to make the enemy literally
inhuman. Battle: Los Angeles succeeds brilliantly, and
in fact I repeatedly thought “Die, you alien f***ers!” as its action unfolded.
Liebesman's effects team does a tremendous job of making the invaders bizarre
yet individual, moving so quickly we'd struggle to describe them to a police
sketch artist, but clearly each their own creature and none of them our
pals. A thrilling sequence where Nantz and Martinez literally rip
a captured enemy to shreds trying to pierce something that would kill it
is totally against the Geneva Convention, but also entirely all right:
these things came halfway across the universe to steal our water and kill
us all (and not even in that order)! B:LA is the kind of movie
where “Hoo Rah!” is someone's exit line; it acknowledges the struggles
that come with the weight of command and survivor's guilt, but it is 1,000%
pro-Marine, and as such delivers some of the most rousingly exciting ground
combat sequences ever committed to film.
Eckhart is totally persuasive
as a military man, and he does a sensational job of showing both the weight
of his past decisions (interestingly, the movie never truly lets us know
if they were mistakes or just unavoidable choices) and that Nantz is a
guy wired to come through when the entire planet needs him to. He
plows forward, single-mindedly searching for solutions without ever making
us think he's forgotten his baggage: it's a really great performance
in the kind of movie that ordinarily would have to make due without one.
It's no surprise at all that Rodriguez sells us that she's a soldier, but
she's also pretty viable as a military scientist. Moynahan
is just right as the kind of person who'd rise to the occasion without
breaking the reality of the situation by being TOO courageous. And
Michael Pena has some great moments as a father caught behind the battle
lines.
Oh, no doubt B:LA
has seen ID4 a couple times... I could hear my inner President Whitmore
crying out “Doesn't anyone have any missiles left?!?” during the climax.
But while the arc of the story is familiar, the individual action setpieces
stand on their own, particularly a show-stopping shootout on a freeway
overpass between our heroes and aliens operating a weird but very convincing
walking machine gun. In general, the alien tech is among the most
persuasive I've seen in a movie precisely because none of it seems brand
new. And the invading force is in no way invincible: shoot
the critters in their hearts and they die, blow up their machines and they
come crashing down. They're just better machines than ours, resulting
in a war that may seem unwinnable, but convincingly isn't. Nantz
and his men don't need to pull a rabbit out of their hats, they just need
to figure out what the rabbit is, and Bertolini's script plays pretty fair
in this regard.
Battle: Los Angeles
runs a familiar formula with great skill, knowing that the appeal of movies
like this is the optimistic attitude that no matter what might befall,
good people can always figure a way out of it. Eckhart plays that
kind of can-do courage to perfection, and the movie knows just how a good
war movie should work if we don't have to feel a moment's guilt about the
enemy. After all, that's what aliens are for, right? So get
on the telegraph and tell your friends all over the world just how to take
those late-winter blockbuster blues out: sorry, I was thinking of
Independence Day again for some reason. And there's nothing
wrong with that. |
