Battle: Los Angeles

Generally when a film has a colon in the title I jump to the conclusion that its not very good. I don't think titles are long enough to warrant using punctuation. That aside, the battle in the title is actually part of a worldwide alien invasion, set in LA. I don't really know the significance of LA in the title, there isn't really any reference to it in the film. It could have been set anywhere.


Aaron Eckhart stars as Staff Sergeant Michael Nantz, a man carrying his past on his shoulders, who at the start of film decides to leave the marines. But then the Aliens invade and he's pushed back into the firefight and has to lead a troop of soldiers to secure a police station in santa monica. It looks as if Aaron Eckhart has been taking voice coaching lessons from Christian Bale on the set of The Dark Knight. There's enough gravel in his voice to fill an entire street of middle class driveways.

There are a lot of characters, i'd probably say there were too many and i don't believe any of them are marines. They look like a group of models from a magazine promoting militarty diversity, there is literally one guy from every ethnic background you could possible imagine. For the first half of the film whenever someone died I wasn't too bothered as I hadn't been able to get emotionally involved in any of them. Incidentally, you can always tells when someone is going to die because you only ever die in this film just after you've saved someone's life. Its something to do with dying honourably I suppose, loses its effect after the 4th or 5th time though.


Michelle Rodriguez turns up about 20 minutes in and really stretches herself in playing tough-girl Tech Sergeant Elanor Santos. She's one of the few characters who sticks out though, to her credit. 


The thing is, I really enjoyed this film. I sat through all the stupidity and the montery jack all american cheese and the silly lines. I was even fine when a civillian thought that she was best qualified to autopsy an alien to find its weakness because she was a vet! A vet! I've never heard someone say that they were a veterinarian with such confidence and authority. Brilliant!


It's exciting all the way through, sort of like Independence Day in the style of Black Hawk Down. There wasn't a moment where I was bored and Ne-Yo is in it. So yeah, the moral of the story: maybe colons aren't too bad. Not really a moral is it. Probably not even the correct use of a colon.