Battle: Los Angeles Brings Alien War To My Door

"Battle: Los Angeles" delivers the goods. Now it's important to establish that if you were expecting a movie about anything besides a battle of marines vs aliens in a destroyed Los Angeles, you will be disappointed. The little character development that takes place in this film is strained at best. We identify characters not by name, but by type. This marine has a pregnant wife, this one doubts his leadership, this one is Two Face, this one has glasses, this one is Tom Brady's Baby Mama, this one was on True Blood....you get the picture. Simply put the film is one long epic firefight between us....and THEM!

Let me get into two things about this film from the get go. The first is that this movie really suffers whenever anybody is talking and not fighting. Some basic military dialogue that's part of the fighting (go over there and kill that thing!) is tolerable, but everything else....yikes. Second this is very much a video game film. The structure of the film with characters getting stronger (leveling up), getting in different vehicles, exploring new environments, facing bosses, is all straight up video game status. This video game similarity isn't a knock on the film, in fact the producers boasted of it at Comic con.

But if you're gonna make the film like a video game and boast about it, you gotta go all in! Where was the "big bad" guy that Eckhart would have to face off against in final (Mortal?) combat? Where were the weapon upgrades? The sniper spree montage? Ask my boy moto, you gotta have the sniper spree! These elements were missing and damaged the film. In general though, if you're going to see a movie called "Battle: Los Angeles" you're expecting in the words of my wise uncle Ted "marines fighting aliens with a excellent special effects!" And that's pretty much all you got.

**Stay tuned on Wednesday for a deeper analysis of the film.