Battle L.A.-review

What the hell kind of alien is this?

If you took every modern warfare movie from the past two decades and tossed the scripts in a blender and tossed aliens in the mix you’d get “Battle L.A.”  Every war cliché in the book is there but the movie itself is so wildly forgettable that you would expect so much more considering the subject matter.  It wasn’t bad as something as “Skyline” but it brought nothing new to the table.

A group of marines go up against aliens in L.A.  That is about it.  There is the stereotypical rookie virgin, the lieutenant that has a pregnant wife, the aging stern sergeant with a heart of gold and of course the countless Private Hudson ripoffs that spend time yelling “Game over man!”   So many clichés are weaved into this.  But then you see the biggest joke to the audience which is the aliens. 

Michelle Rodriguez as a tough chick in a movie? That's new.

Considering they totally ripped off the ships of “District 9” why they made the choices they did with the aliens is a mystery. For one thing scientists suppose that they are after our water.  This seems a long way to travel to deal with combat just to get water when there is water on various planets, meteors and asteroids.  Regardless these aliens look like an eclectic mix of Black Manta of DC Comics fame and mushroom men. 

You’d think at least this would be an interesting movie if maybe it didn’t suppose that the U.S. military wasn’t more inept and pussy than the aliens that are incredibly easy to kill.  How can a group of aliens whose ship takes a single missile to bring down take out an entire Marine base? Under these circumstances it’s easier to believe that the creatures from ID4 were taken out from a Mac.

No running around the pool!

So maybe if you have never seen a war movie before this might be right up your alley.  If you like shitty effects and pussy aliens that pose as much threat as E.T then it might be up your alley as well.    But if you are not and you think that movies should at least attempt at originality then perhaps giving it a miss might be the best bet.