Review of Battle: Los Angeles (2011) by Darren C — 25 May 2012

Battle: Los Angeles is one of those movies that sees humans fighting an alien invasion with so many clichés thrown in, it puts Sanctum to shame. The first ten minutes of Battle: Los Angeles kept your attention but after those precious ten minutes, all was lost and everything turned dire. The movie had no plot and had such a wafer thin story that it was hardly visible to even see a trace of a story anywhere. The movie itself managed to stretch the hardly-visible story to almost two hours, which is way too long for this movie. If you cut all of the unnecessary or tedious scenes from the movie, you would most likely have the runtime of one hour (or probably even less). Battle: Los Angeles has characters that aren't likeable in the slightest and have hardly any personality to them at all as most of them are the same. There was no character development to be seen anywhere and you couldn't connect or care about any of the characters, as they were all annoying. All they did was shout at each other through the majority of the movie and, while it's true that they are fighting aliens, there were some scenes when they were not fighting but they were still shouting at each other. This isn't necessary and it doesn't add any authenticity or realism to the movie but it does add irritation and it does give you a headache.

Battle: Los Angeles also has terrible acting from the entire cast. Their performances as their characters were not believable in the slightest and they were quite annoying after a while. The writer of Battle: Los Angeles tried to make an epic alien invasion movie by adding so much action as well as a lot of unneeded dramas between the main characters and the end result is cliché overload. The script was just terrible, it was absolutely abysmal with so many lines that physically made you shake your head and close your eyes with disbelief that the script was actually accepted. With a lot more time and work, Battle: Los Angeles could have been a great little movie which may not have been the best movie out there but it would have been entertaining. However, this felt too rushed and it shows through the quality of the movie. Overall, Battle: Los Angeles is a major disappointment and is something that people who like action with nothing else added would like but even then, it's unsure.

This is definitely the worst movie of 2011 so far. Riddled with too many clichés, a terrible script, horrible characters, boring action scenes and a story that's wafer thin, Battle: Los Angeles is something I would not recommend to anybody. The only thing that is good about this movie is the CGI scenes but unfortunately, they are not enough to keep your attention or to keep you entertained. Not only is Battle: Los Angeles terrible (and not in an unintentionally funny way) but it is also extremely boring.