1 Nut
Director: Jonathan Liebesman
Battle Los Angeles is one of those movies you can walk into late and still know exactly what is going on. Sure it’s good for the tardy ones among us but, it sucks for the majority of the audience. You can walk in 10 minutes late, 20 minutes late, but I would suggest not walking in at all.
The film is about Aliens invading Earth; they shoot at us, we shoot back, it’s not very original. For most of the movie there is no plan, or objective, just Marines going around killing aliens. Only towards the very end of the film is there any type of objective. The action scenes are long and tedious and seem to be going nowhere. By the 3rd battle I was getting pretty bored, and with all the massive explosions and gunfire, I shouldn't have been. It felt too much like a video game, and not enough like a good movie.
Unfortunately that wasn’t the worst part of the film, where the movie really suffered was in its dialogue. It had some of the cheesiest cliché lines that I have ever heard. Most of these lines you have heard a hundred times from other war movies. As much as I didn’t enjoy the action scenes, I truly dreaded the moments when characters opened their mouths to speak. The acting was subpar to say the least. This I’m sure had a lot to do with the terrible script, but some actors were also overacting. Aaron Eckhart is the main character and I didn’t even think he did such a good job.
The direction is not good. But this was no surprise as it was directed by Jonathan Liebesman who has done such classics as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, and Darkness Falls. He couldn’t decide whether he wanted to have the camera stay still or move franticly. What we got was something between the two, which although works for action scenes, is terrible for the dialogue scenes. I guess it was there to distract us from the mindless dribble that came out of the characters’ mouths. The editing worked for the battles but was way too fast when people were simply conversing. The director had a tendency to zoom in on characters faces. I’m assuming he did this to show their expressions; unfortunately these two dimensional characters had none, so it just looks silly.
In a peaNut shell: The movie takes itself pretty seriously but has no heart. It lacks a real story and has terrible dialogue making it a movie to miss. Its two hours too long.
Yes it sucked (but it appealed to my interests so at parts I was entertained) but I still feel the idea had such potential. If the script was given to a competent screen writer to fix and decent director did it, this could have been a cool film. So disappointing to see potential wasted.
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