Roger Ebert /really/ hates Battle: LA

Here's what I know: *Battle: Los Angeles *earned a 37% approval rating at
Rotten Tomatoes, Roger Ebert gave it half of one star, but his readers gave
it a full four stars. After the debacle that was Skyline, I was hoping this
would be the better picture. It sounds like the complaints are similar: all
action, no story. I like both. When done well, you get the four starred *Black
Hawk Down *or *Aliens*.

I'm still going to see it tomorrow night for my birthday for *Dude's Night
Out*, and the critics be hanged.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110309/REVIEWS/110309992


  Battle: Los Angeles

 * BY ROGER EBERT / * March 9, 2011


 Cast & Credits
Nantz Aaron Eckhart<http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/classifieds?category=search1&SearchType=1&q=Aaron%20Eckhart&Class=%25&FromDate=19150101&ToDate=20111231>
Elena Michelle Rodriguez
Michele Bridget Moynahan
Joe Michael Pena

Columbia Pictures presents a film directed by Jonathan Liebesman. Written by
Christopher Bertolini. Running time: 116 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for sustained
and intense sequences of war violence and destruction, and for language).

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 "Battle: Los Angeles" is noisy, violent, ugly and stupid. Its manufacture
is a reflection of appalling cynicism on the part of its makers, who don't
even try to make it more than senseless chaos. Here's a science-fiction film
that's an insult to the words "science" and "fiction," and the hyphen in
between them. You want to cut it up to clean under your fingernails.

Meteors fall to Earth near the coasts of the world's major cities (and in
Ireland's Dingle Bay — that meteor must have strayed off course). They
contain alien troops, which march up from the beach with their weapons of
war and attack mankind. No reason is given for this, although it's mentioned
they may want our water. We meet the members of a Marine platoon, and its
battle-scarred Staff Sgt. Nantz (Aaron
Eckhart<http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/classifieds?category=search1&SearchType=1&q=Aaron%20Eckhart&Class=%25&FromDate=19150101&ToDate=20111231>).
They're helicoptered into Santa Monica and apparently defeat the aliens.
Since all of Los Angeles is frequently seen in flames, it's not entirely
clear how the Santa Monica action is crucial, but apparently it is.

The aliens are hilarious. Do they give Razzies for special effects? They
seem to be animal/machine hybrids with automatic weapons growing from their
arms, which must make it hard to change the baby. As the Marines use their
combat knives to carve into the aliens, they find one layer after another of
icky gelatinous pus-filled goo. Luckily, the other aliens are mostly seen in
long shot, where they look like stick figures whipped up by apprentice
animators.

Aaron Eckhart<http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/classifieds?category=search1&SearchType=1&q=Aaron%20Eckhart&Class=%25&FromDate=19150101&ToDate=20111231>stars
as Staff Sgt. Nantz, a 20-year veteran who has something shady in his
record, which people keep referring to, although screenwriter Christopher
Bertolini is too cagey to come right out and describe it. Never mind.
Eckhart is perfectly cast, and let the word go forth that he makes one hell
of a great-looking action hero. He is also a fine actor, but acting skills
are not required from anyone in this movie.

The dialogue consists almost entirely of terse screams: *Watch it! Incoming!
Move! Look out! Fire! Move!* The only characters I re­member having four
sentences in a row are the anchors on cable news. Although the platoon
includes the usual buffet of ethnicities, including Latinos, Asians and a
Nigerian surgeon, none of them get much more than a word or two in a row, so
as characters, they're all placeholders.

You gotta see the alien battleships in this movie. They seem to have been
assembled by the proverbial tornado blowing through a junkyard. They're
aggressively ugly and cluttered, the product of a planet where design has
not been discovered and even the Coke bottles must look like pincushions.
Although these ships presumably arrived inside the meteors, one in
particular exhibits uncanny versatility, by rising up from the Earth before
the very eyes of the startled Marines. How, you may ask, did it tunnel for
10 or 12 blocks under Santa Monica to the battle lines at Lincoln Boulevard?

There is a lazy editing style in action movies these days that assumes
nothing need make any sense visually. In a good movie, we understand where
the heroes are, and where their opponents are, and why, and when they fire
on each other, we understand the geometry. In a mess like this, the frame is
filled with flashes and explosions and shots so brief that nothing makes
sense. From time to time, there'll be a closeup of Aaron
Eckhart<http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/classifieds?category=search1&SearchType=1&q=Aaron%20Eckhart&Class=%25&FromDate=19150101&ToDate=20111231>screaming
something, for example, and on either side of that shot, there
will be unrelated shots of incomprehensible action.

When I think of the elegant construction of something like "Gunfight at the
OK Corral," I want to rend the hair from my head and weep bitter tears of
despair. Generations of filmmakers devoted their lives to perfecting
techniques that a director like Jonathan Liebesman is either ignorant of, or
indifferent to. Yet he is given millions of dollars to produce this assault
on the attention span of a generation.

Young men: If you attend this crap with friends who admire it, tactfully
inform them they are idiots. Young women: If your date likes this movie,
tell him you've been thinking it over, and you think you should consider
spending some time apart.


Johne Cook
| http://raygunrevival.com | http://authorculture.blogspot.com |*
*

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