Battle: Los Angeles

In the last few years, the alien invasion genre really has been taking a pounding thanks to mediocre movie after mediocre movie.  For whatever reason, after "Independence Day" decided to portray the invasion on an epic scale showing the President on down, giving us a full picture of the interstellar war, every alien invasion movie instead decided "No, we're not going to do that.  Instead, let's focus on a small group of annoying characters and never give the big picture."  Naturally I hated "War of the Worlds", despite it being filmed in my home town, I especially hated "Cloverfield" for starring a pudgy dimwit who may be the single worst character in the history of cinema, and "Skyline" was so bad I wondered if an alien invasion movie could be halfway decent ever again.  Sadly the best alien invasion movie that I can think of in this century is "Evolution" starring David Duchovny and that was a comedy.

One of my main problems with those three movies is that they always give you brief glimpses of what the military is doing to fight the aliens.  In "Skyline" for example, you might see a CG Humvee fighting some CG aliens (everything was CG in that movie, probably even the actors).  My issue there was, why can't we be following the soldiers in the Humvee?  Screw Hud and the rest of the "Cloverfield" gang, I want to know what these GIs are doing.  1) Being soldiers they'd have a better idea of what's going on, 2) being soldiers they wouldn't be rich horribly unlikable Hollywood bastards or Tom Cruise's hateful family, and 3) being soldiers this would turn into a war movie, and who wouldn't want to see a war movie with aliens spliced in to replace Ze Germans?

"Battle: Los Angeles" somehow or another broke into my brain and stole my idea.  I might have been sore about this, but luckily "Battle: LA" actually is not that bad of a movie.  Its far from being "Independence Day", but it works on its own.  As a war movie, its not bad.  As an alien invasion movie, its the best one by far of the 21st century.  So yeah, go see it.

Naturally of course, the critics, as I overheard one man describe, "hammered it".  Come on, critics, I know "Skyline" was dreadfully terrible and terribly dreadful and all, but this movie isn't "Skyline".  Yes, it is an alien invasion movie taking place in Los Angeles with flying alien machines and things falling out of the sky, and yes there even was a lawsuit over this, but "Invasion: LA" is far better.  Even I'll admit that I was writing a negative review of this movie while driving over to the theatre, but when I sat down I was pleasantly surprised.

"Battle: LA" starts out by establishing roughly fifty-three marine characters, very few of which you'll actually be able to remember beyond vague physical characteristics.  There's the mousy guy, the guy who looks like Freddy Mercury, the guy with thick glasses, the African immigrant, Lt. Latino, and various other characters who sort of blur together into a grey mush of indistinguishable and plot-conveniently expendable jarheads.  The movie throws you text telling you every one of their names, but God help me if I can remember one.  The star of course is Aaron Eckhart, a Staff Sargent who manages to pull off the marine look thanks to having one incredibly impressive jawbone and a deep growly voice.  Aaron Eckhart lost his entire squad in Afghanistan and so has to regain the trust of this troops while the aliens invade Los Angeles.  For a brief moment while virgin jokes were being made, I was very frightened that this movie would be awful, but luckily that came to end very quickly.

The aliens at first have no air support, so the mission for the marines at first is to look for civilians before a huge air bombardment destroys all of Santa Monica and the alien menace.  Along the way they pick up various civilians, and Michelle Rodriguez who once again is playing the hard-ass chick, AKA "Vasquez", something she's made a career out of now.  Seeing Michelle Rodriguez come out of nowhere made me laugh.  The aliens, however, are experts in urban warfare, planning ambushes, pinning down the marines, and being really tough to kill.  The cast in turn responds with very realistic urban combat tactics, and most scenes actually feel like this is how things would play out if the marines were fighting alien scum in Santa Monica.  A nice contrast with "Independence Day"'s silly air combat scenes:  "Eagle 7, Fox 3!!"

Then things get much worse when the aliens suddenly appear with an air force of drone fighters.  Aaron Eckhart slowly takes charge as he's always trying to figure out how the aliens tick.  One that he captures is ripped to pieces so that they can find where to shot them so that they go down.  I should mention what the aliens look like:  they're humanoid, half droid and half grey blob, with no facial features I could spot - they remind me of old-timey Sci-Fi novel illustrations.  Unfortunately for humanity, the aliens are very advanced, and soon enough all seems lost.

There was a moment roughly 3/4ths of the way through "Battle: LA" where I started to feel fatigue.  The movie had simply gone on for a bit too long, and the humans were losing too badly.  I had a similar moment in "Skyline":  come on aliens, just finish us humans off already so the audience can go home.  Though strangely enough, I think this is exactly what "Battle: LA" was going for, at that moment all the characters on screen were basically feeling what I was feeling.  So Aaron Eckhart makes a cheesy war movie speech, and they go on fighting.  By the way, things are not as hopeless as they look.

All I have to say is that we humans are so lucky that every time an alien race invades us, they always have one single weakspot that can be destroyed and so shift the entire flow of battle.

But the real star of the movie is not Aaron Eckhart or the vague alien menace.  No, its the marine core itself.  At the very last moment, once Aaron Eckhart and his soldiers fly back into LA to keep on fighting, that's the moment where "Battle: LA" succeeds as a movie.  The soldiers here run around fighting for each other, for AMERICA, spouting the classic WWI line "Retreat? Hell!"*, and of course, quite a few "OO-RAH"s.  I'm reminded of "Starship Troopers" here, where the very military spirit was the central character, though in that movie it was done with such cartoonish abandon that it became a self-parody.  In "Battle: LA", the marine fighting spirit is ironically celebrated, and goddamn me if its not inspirational.  Its been a very long time since the US military was able to appear in a movie without being the bad guy in some fashion.  I know I for one am sick of movies like "Avatar" where America and its soldiers always have to be the villain.  You'd think the men fighting for our liberty could deserve at least one movie to pat them on the back?

Otherwise we'll probably be sorry when the aliens actually do invade.  Because if there's anybody I want on the front lines fighting the alien menace, its a couple of OO-RAH hard-core marines.  I salute you good sirs.  Keep killing those aliens.  And I wouldn't mind seeing a "Battle:  New York" either.

--------------------------------------------
* Captain Lloyd W. Williams, while fighting in WWI was advised by - who else - a French officer to retreat.  Captain Williams replied with classic American bravado "Retreat?  Hell, we just got here!"  He actually might have wanted to take that Frenchman's advise, since Captain Williams did not survive the day.