Batlle: Los Angeles

Jonathan Liebesman

Though the title's use of snappy punctuation promises great things, this movie lacks some essentials: Ice Cube, Jerry Bruckheimer, Robert Downey Jr. as a black man and /or Jeff Goldblum.

Instead of leading characters, played by dynamic, charismatic actors we get some hard-core guys who auditioned for Generation Kill and failed. The best we get are Aaron Eckhart doing his damnedest to put pathos into an aging staff sergeant and Michelle Rodriguez's air force … something.

For Rodriguez, this is her element: hot, hard-core chick out with the boys in a knife + gun fight. She gives the best delivery of lines, moves the most naturally, and steals the best line (I'm not giving anything away by telling you it's “That hurt!” as she retaliates against an alien).

Eckhart, however, is rightfully typecast as the swaggering charmer of Thank You for Smoking and The Dark Knight's Harvey Dent. He is able to deliver serious lines like “your brother was my friend and I miss him every day,” but he also seems too smart for them to be coming out of his mouth.

The writing just doesn't let either of them take the movie by storm. I kept waiting for them to go off as a pair, jet around on automated, alien drone ships, or, at the very least, work together to take down the mother ship. There was teasing to this end, but action kept being dispersed to what could easily be a Desperate Housewife, some useless marine from New Jersey, another useless marine straight out of officer training, someone with a mustache... etc.

So much for a good movie skeleton. That's fine—it's an alien movie. I can watch Transformers despite the teenage melodrama—there are transformers transforming WHILE THEY FLY. It's cool. I'll just wait for these aliens to do cool things, too.

But, alas. They look pretty neat. They make really fun sounds. Their ships kick ass. Skywalker Ranch might just want to gang press the people who designed those hovering, sectional drone ships. However, again, the coolest things are denied their natural birth-rite. As soon as we get a good shot of them, the cameras movie to the face of a screaming child, or scared marine^¹.

Why? Because Liebesman had a vision. He was going to make this movie as a war documentary sort of thing, but with aliens. A nice concept. How would America really react to an alien invasion? Suddenly, the evacuation, chain of command, and dispersal of dramatic action makes sense.

I get it, but the reason Generation Kill is so good, the reason Black Hawk Down is so good, the reason Saving Private Ryan won all those Oscars is not just because of their lack of aliens, but because the characters are fucking brilliant and the writing allows genuine humans to say and do genuine human things.

Besides, Gen. Kill has seven plus hours to let us care about a dozen different guys. And Black Hawk and Ryan are both movies first and realistic second. You know this because they start at one time with funerals and such, then back pedal through time. The film colors change. The sets are recognizably different places. It's tough to differentiate and design sets for bombed-to-shit apartment complexes in Santa Monica, but that's why they pay you the big bucks.

You can only rely on “it's supposed to be realistic, man.” for so long. Especially when your allowing already charred cars to bully a single hand grenade into a 30 foot plume of fire that miraculously takes out (for all intents and purposes) an ATAT and three humanoids. Previously marines had to empty three assault rifle magazines into a single alien to kill it. Discrepancies like this accumulate the closer Liebesman gets to the 2 hour mark and somehow has to resolve everything.

There are two sorts of sci fi flicks: Alien and Armegeddon. One takes itself seriously. One doesn't. Unfortunately, B:LA sets up characters who very much take themselves seriously, and puts them in a situation that by no rights should be treated seriously.

For better versions of this film, download:

1. Independence Day

2. Peter Jackson's District 9

3. Generation Kill

4. Plan 9 from Outer Space

¹The marines I know wouldn't take this much time gawking. That's their whole raison detre: to be focused. The number of times Eckhart has to tell not only his subordinates or commander to focus is enough to make me want to insert myself, Uzis at ready.