Battle: Los Angeles Review

If Battle: Los Angeles isn't the worst movie of the year, we're in for a horrific spot of hellish cinema at some point in the near future, because it's hard to imagine anything worse than this formulaic garbage.  Far too long, far too self-serious, and far too unoriginal, Battle: Los Angeles represents all that is wrong with movies today.  It plops down into its genre and cares about nothing else: it's a parade of cliches hoping to appeal to the die-hards who get hard-ons anytime something explodes.  The action genre is one of the most tired in Hollywood today, and after some refreshing entries in the past few years (most specifically, District 9), something this stale is simply unbearable.

Alien invasion will likely never be able to serve as a basis for a compellingly original narrative again, but even with that seeming impossibility established, Battle: Los Angeles fails in spectacular fashion.  Never before has an Us vs. Them scenario chugged along so uninterestingly, giving the action as much context and motivation as the worst-written video game you can imagine.  Indeed, the characters blast away from one checkpoint to another, never seeming too concerned with the bigger picture, because if they can make it to Point B, then Point C's location will be revealed, and their lives will have further meaning!

Of course, these characters deserve the torturous fate they've been granted here.  The film begins with a series of introductions that give each character a single defining characteristic.  We get such compelling heros as the virgin, the groom-to-be, and the father-to-be.  Plus, we're treated to some walking military cliches, most notably the two omnipresent hard-boiled types: the veteran with a checkerd past who wants to get out but gets pulled in for one last glorious mission, and Michelle Rodriguez.

Even Aaron Eckhart, who delivered career-best work in last year's Rabbit Hole, fails to find any measure of success in the terrible material.  The best that can be said for the talented actor is that he dedicates himself to the crap with a fervor to rival that of Sir Nicolas Cage (knighted for his contributions to the Worst of Film).  Eckhart digs right into each overly hardass line, providing some unintentional laughs, but even these moments of accidental comedy are too few and far between to add any value to the film as a whole.  The Happening, this is not.  And if there were ever damning words for a film, those would be them.

In a world of sci-fi actioners that include the visual pop of Avatar and the complex characterization and story-telling of District 9, a lame retread of the genre's worst examples doesn't even come close to cutting it.  The muddy visuals, the epileptic camerawork, and the laughable dialogue are all products of an era that should be forgotten.  Film-goers deserve better than this, and should demand better than this.  But with a healthy first weekend at the box office, and Hollywood's tendency to cling to any successful venture like a leech to some especially attractive-to-leeches person, before you know it, we'll probably be "treated" to Battle: New York, and possibly even Battle: Cleveland.  It wouldn't be the first time movie fans were punished for their collective bad taste.