BATTLE LOS ANGELES, starring Aaron Eckhart

Sometimes a movie has a glitch that is so startling, so massive, and so story-destroying that it can’t be overlooked. This movie has one. I’ll get to it in a minute.

First off, let me say that no, you should not waste your time or money on this movie, and not for the big oops I’m about to let you in on. There’s way way way too much violence with very little take-away value. And the alien component is neither original, nor interesting.

A violent movie with great take-away value is Saving Private Ryan, which should not (never mind what my former pastor said) be viewed by anyone under the age of 15, and only then with a lot of teaching ahead of time. You want the future soldier in your life to understand that war isn’t glorious—it actually is a glimpse into hell. You want the future historian in your life to understand this as well so she doesn’t teach war in a war-is-glorious tone to her students (yes, even including the Revolution).

An alien movie with great take-away value is District 9, an amazing film with profound character development, intricate plotting, and deep, loving relationships on both sides of the creature divide. In Los Angeles, we only see the aliens from a distance, except for the one we dissect, an operation which is productive in terms of knowledge, but doesn’t seem to propel the action or the resolution of the story. I think they did it just to be gross. There is no humanity in the operation, and in fact, the creature is still alive as they probe around inside him, sans anesthesia, with bayonets. If the aliens didn’t hate us before, this would kind of do it.

Relationship is lacking in this movie. There is only one interesting relationship, and that is between Staff Sergeant Nantz (Eckhart) and a soldier under his command who blames Nantz for the death of his brother (also under Nantz’s command) in Iraq. There are no other family relationships. No one is trying to get back home to his family or save his family from the aliens. (The trailer had me fooled here, as it seemed a man was trying to save his family, but it turns out he doesn’t know these people at all.)

The alien invasion itself is conflicted. First we hear that these “meteors” were only seen by NASA four days ago, but then later we hear that we didn’t notice them until they entered our atmosphere. We all know it only takes a few minutes to get through the atmosphere, because we’ve seen Apollo 13, and we know it takes three minutes surrounded by fire and then you have to worry about ablative heat shields.

My husband pointed out that the Marines don’t use Hueys anymore—they use Blackhawks. But maybe the budget for the movie wasn’t big enough to get any Blackhawks. I’m not a helicopter person myself, so I don’t know if he’s right, but I point it out because he’s right most of the time, especially when it comes to things that have engines and fly. (We’re walking along. Suddenly he stops, tilts his head: “I hear a round engine.” Then follows reminiscences of his great Pratt & Whitney days, when he could pick up an engine, as if I don’t remember those biceps…)

Another thing Marines don’t do (and I know this personally, but it’s a long story) is speak in the restrained non-salty language of this film’s dialogue. I understand they have to edit the speech patterns of Marines or you couldn’t get a PG-13 rating, and then your target demographic couldn’t get into the movie without dragging someone’s over-21 sibling along. (At least here in California, the accompanied-by-parent rule is “up to the theater management,” and therefore not enforced–anyone old enough to buy alcohol will do.) The Lord’s name is taken in vain less than five times, I’d say, and the word for which Marines are Famous is used, drum roll, once.

One distraction that actually offended me was when the Air Force recon officer gets on top of a vehicle to man a machine gun, and a Marine looks at her and says, “What are you doing here?” and it is clear he is questioning her because of her gender, not because of her service branch. It’s twenty-eleven, Buster, so knock it off already, and get out of lady’s line of fire.

Long story short, this is a throw-away Spring action flick that should do moderately well among people who like loud movies with giant explosions where the good guys hunker down a few yards away and don’t get hurt, nor do exploding aircraft drop any debris on them, nor are they burned.

As for the aliens, they want our water, but they only use it for fueling, so I don’t know how they got here. Also, the ocean levels are discernibly lower, according to the television alien expert (I’m sure CNN has these guys on retainer, just in case), within the first few hours, so I think pretty soon, all the water will be gone, and then what’s the point, and how will they have enough energy to blast out of our atmosphere when the water is gone? Sure, it’s easy coming down. Going up is something else altogether. Besides, they lived presumably thousands of years without water in Wherever They Come From, so why do they need it now?

The Marines need someone to protect, so conveniently there are five people hiding in an abandoned police station. A man, a woman, and three kids. The man is the father of the boy, and the lady (Bridget Moynahan, way too big of a star to be in this teensy role: we don’t even learn her name) is the girls’ aunt. The only reason these people are in the movie is so the Marines have someone to save before the Air Force bombs what’s left of Los Angeles into the stone age so that the aliens will leave. No one wonders how this will help since there are alien landings in twenty cities around the globe and they are all drinking out of the oceans. I mean, if the Atlantic is drunk up, the Pacific is also gone. It’s not like these are disconnected ponds.

But back to the five people. Now I can tell you about that Gigantic Glitch, the movie-killer: Los Angeles was evacuated in about an hour. Four million people live in the city limits, never mind the county (about ten million). You and I both know it takes an hour to get to work, and that’s on a good day. I don’t need to tell you why this is absurd and wrecks the movie from the beginning, but I will.

With the exception of the opening scene in which people are running off the beach, we never see any civilians. (Strangely, after the opening “landing scene,” we are jerked back to the day before and come up on the landing again, only this time no one is around.) There is no mass panic, no gridlock, no gangs looting (or taking on the aliens, either, which would be a neat story idea—what if gangs could defeat the aliens and establish a sort of moral high-ground, a get-out-of-jail-free card, a “yes, Your Honor, I know it’s my third strike, but I’m the guy who saved the World!”), no homeless people, no teenage prostitutes or little old people terrified to stay, terrified to leave, not even any police. Speaking of that, the five people are found in an abandoned police station—left alone by heartless cops who make the USMC come in and sweep up after them, a slander on the LAPD if I ever heard one.

I could go on, but you get the idea: no.

2 thoughts on “BATTLE LOS ANGELES, starring Aaron Eckhart”

  1. Thanks for your comments. I wanted this to be the fun action movie that would be a great “sneak-out” for the guys in my house (just me! wink-wink). I’ll wait for RedBox. Thanks for another great blog-review.

  2. I enjoyed Battle LA. It seemed clear to me that the evacuation was of the coastal areas only, while the rest of LA was continuing to evacuate. I totally missed any sexism toward the female warrior – probably as all the actors saw her in The Fast and The Furious and as a LAPD cop in LOST and knew messing with her would result in possible serious injury. Biker Dudes would have been awesome. The use of camera angles and POV was very cool – mom would have walked out in 30 seconds.

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