Battle: Los Angeles Review

“Battle: Los Angeles” is an action-packed sci-fi spectacle…where not that much actually happens.

Director Jonathan Liebsman conjures up several striking visuals…but I’d already started to forget about the movie on the drive home.

Typically, when an action movie — or any movie — is forgettable, it’s because of a lack of interesting, well-developed characters. “Battle: Los Angeles” is no exception.

Before meteor-like fireballs start raining down on Los Angeles, we meet a group of Marines led by the relatively inexperienced Lt. William Martinez (Ramon Rodriguez) and Sgt. Michael Nantz (Aaron Eckhart), who is on the verge of retirement. (What is this? “Lethal Weapon”?)

Once the city is under attack, the platoon is sent to evacuate a portion of downtown Los Angeles, but end up tangling with the aliens and fighting for their lives.

The fact that there’s really nothing more to this movie is both the best and the worst thing about it.

It’s good because the movie is never boring (or at least never quiet) and ‘Battle: Los Angeles” totally works as a straightforward shoot-em-up.

More specifically, I was a bit struck to realize that, despite a strong physical presence and one of the squarest jaws in Hollywood, this was Aaron Eckhart’s first outing as a full-on action hero. I thought it looked good on him and I’m glad he really brought it.

On the other hand, the simplistic plot/characters are not a good thing because nothing that happens really matters.

The movie even seemed to acknowledge how non-descript its characters were by identifying each one of the Marines with title cards near the start of the movie. Even after that, when one of them died I’d have to turn to someone and ask, “Who just got killed?!” I didn’t even realize R&B star Ne-Yo was in the movie until after I went to its IMDb page!

Of course, the lack of interesting humans may have been saved by intriguing aliens. Except that we don’t really get a great look at the aliens most of the time, which is fine if you’re trying to make them scary. The problem is that what we DO find out about them isn’t terrible interesting. Let’s just say their motivation for attacking Earth (which I won’t reveal) has been famously done before. The movie also establishes that to kill one, you have to shoot to the right of where its heart should be…but that never really factors into the story in a significant way.

Ok, so neither the humans nor the aliens are terribly interesting…I know! The movie is called “Battle: Los Angeles”…let’s make the city a character. Unfortunately, except for a set piece set on a freeway and the presence of a few Mexican characters, there’s really not that much to indicate that this movie is set in Los Angeles.

I admire that the movie tried to play it relatively straight and establish a grim tone (being invaded by aliens isn’t a fun romp…it sucks!). But since “Battle: Los Angeles” wound up being a shoot-em-up with bland characters, I wish everyone involved would’ve had more fun. As it stands, the real attempts at humor were overshadowed by unintentional comedy. (Like a character seriously declaring during a tense moment: “Maybe I can help…I’m a veterinarian.” Come on! That line is straight out of “Airplane!”)

In the end, “Battle: Los Angeles” winds up being an entertaining but completely uninvolving action movie that wasn’t quite as interesting as its awesome trailer.

Battle: Los Angeles…C+