3 stars
Most everything about "Battle: Los Angeles" is either derivative or a lie, including its top-line credit that reads: "Columbia Pictures presents, in association with Relativity Media, an Original Film production." Original, it's not. Exciting, it is. This jacked-up B-movie hybrid of "Black Hawk Down" and "War of the Worlds" is a modest but crafty triumph of tension over good sense and cliche.
If you had told me yesterday that I'd be recommending a movie -- any movie -- in which the hero tells a preteen boy, "I need you to be brave for me ... I need you to be my little Marine," I'd have made you watch "The Green Berets" for your insolence. Yet here we are, and here I am, recommending it. A surprising percentage of "Battle: Los Angeles" is swift and compellingly chaotic. It's also pretty sharp in its depiction of how a small group of Marines and a small group of civilians, under attack from a newfound enemy, might actually threaten to unravel under duress.
Exposition? There is none. Aliens attack Earth at various points along various coastlines. They need water, and lots of it, apparently to power their machinery and themselves. (They like to stay hydrated, as does everyone else in LA.) On the verge of retirement -- yes, that old story -- the staff sergeant played by Aaron Eckhart must lead the charge and find a way to defeat these slimy, heavy-artillery-bearing jerks.
He does. (Retroactive spoiler alert.) What's refreshing about "Battle: Los Angeles" is that for a good while, before the rah-rah stuff toward the end, the cumulative effects of all the carnage actually seem to affect the characters. Eckhart isn't playing some sort of superhuman action toy; none too subtly, screenwriter Chris Bertolini makes Nantz a stoic with secrets, having recently come off a rough tour of duty in Iraq where he lost men in combat. The movie's designed as apolitical payback for our fighting forces' recent and ongoing battles in the Middle East. And at heart, yes, it's a recruitment reel for the Marines.
Yet "Battle: Los Angeles" doesn't embrace the drooling fantasy militarism you find in Michael Bay's "Transformers" pictures, for example. The focus of the story here is gratifyingly narrow: It's about a handful of people trying to get a handful of blocks to a safe zone on the west side of LA, and not get killed in the process. The saving-the-world part is almost an afterthought.
Jonathan Liebesman directed it, in a style that can be described as faux-documentary and very heavy on the close-ups. It won't kill him, in future projects, to discover the value of an occasional medium- or long-shot, and of sustaining that shot more than 2.4 seconds. But the action remains scarily lucid under fire, braking just short of relentlessness. I suppose my tolerance and even enjoyment of the typical Roland Emmerich cheeseball of the "Independence Day" and "2012" variety, explains why I went with this far less grandiose diversion. LA always seems to be taking it in the shorts from something or other. I mean, "Skyline" just came and went. In my moviegoing mind's eye the city has only now just recovered from "Earthquake" in Sensurround. Aliens, might I suggest Wisconsin Dells for your next visit?
MPAA rating: PG-13 (for sustained and intense sequences of war violence and destruction, and for language).
Running time: 1:56.
Cast: Aaron Eckhart (Marine Staff Sgt. Nantz); Michelle Rodriguez (Sgt. Elena Santos); Ramon Rodriguez (Second Lt. William Martinez); Bridget Moynahan (Michele); Ne-Yo (Cpl. Kevin Harris); Michael Pena (Rincon).
Credits: Directed by Jonathan Liebesman; written by Chris Bertolini; produced by Neal H. Moritz and Ori Marmur. A Columbia Pictures release.
