Review of Battle: Los Angeles (2011) by Jake H — 26 Feb 2015

Battle: Los Angeles is, for me, the epitome of a guilty pleasure movie.

When I was my naive young self, prior to the days when explosions and fancy effects were enough to significantly colour my opinions on the quality of films, Battle: LA really blew me away. I thought the alien vs. human battle scenes were very epic and intense. That was really about it.

Yeah, I really wasn't to critical back then...

One can simply sum up this movie as a grade B version of Blackhawk Down. I say grade B because you take away an intriguing, emotional story with decent characters, and replace it with a story that's more-a-less just a sic-fi war version of it. The characters, while actually pretty well acted, are mostly just walking clichés, with is mainly attributed to the cheesy dialogue given to them. Aaron Eckhart is quite the badass as the grizzled Marine veteran, and he's without a doubt the best part of the film.

This movie is an alien invasion movie, and the key to having a good if not decent alien invasion flick is to paint a cool invasion. That's arguably what saves this movie for me, because the alien onslaught painted in this movie is one of the most intense and gritty that I've seen in recent memory. While a bit held back by the PG-13 rating, the scenes of warfare between Marine and alien forces was a lot of fun to watch, and was greatly aided by some great sound design. For someone who is a fan of the Halo games, these battle scenes really mirrored the atmosphere and tone that the games set up. The soundtrack by Brian Tyler is also very well done.

Battle: Los Angeles is derptastic! A simple movie that is nonetheless quite a bit of fun to watch.