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Take “Independence Day” and “Skyline” or any aliens-invade-L.A. thriller. Strip it of Will Smith and any one-liners the heroes might snap off upon killing an alien. What you have is “Battle: Los Angeles,” a war movie with an extraterrestrial enemy.
It’s a house-to-house, street-by-street infantry combat movie in the modern video-game mold — smoke, laser blasts, explosions, fleeting glimpses of the foe and chance encounters with civilians. Remember, you lose points for shooting civilians. This isn’t Libya, for Pete’s sake.
Meteors are splashing into the world’s oceans, the cable news folks tell us. But what they’re not telling us is what the military knows: “They’re slowing down before impact.”
Armored warriors storm the beach at Santa Monica, and the Marines scramble to get civilians out of a free-fire zone along the coast, territory they plan to bomb to stop the invasion.
Aaron Eckhart is the staff sergeant with a troubled past, a guy about to get out of the Corps suddenly hurled back into combat. Ramon Rodriguez plays his lieutenant, and Ne-Yo, Noel Fisher, James Hiroyuki Liao and others make up the squad that sets off into the No Man’s Land of Santa Monica to face off with an utterly unknown foe.
Jonathan Liebesman nicely handles the early scenes, shooting the confused soldiers’ point of view with a shaky hand-held camera and lots of fog. The lightning-quick enemy troopers don’t seem all that bothered by bullets. The whole “You kill anything that is not human” ethos and esprit de corps is straight out of a hundred other combat films. That’s not a knock, but this isn’t a movie that stands up to a lot of pondering.
The squad reaches a police station where a few civilians (Michael Pena and Bridget Moynahan) are holed up, and they all try to figure out how to get out of the bomb zone and how these space invaders might be killed. Let’s dissect one. And when you’re doing a live alien autopsy, it helps to have a veterinarian around.
The aliens seem like preliminary sketches of the revoltingly real critters of “District 9.” The locations are almost convincing as corners of that filmed-to-death metropolis, Los Angeles (they shot most of it in Louisiana).
It’s a film of noble sacrifice and “good deaths” but surprisingly few chuckles. Still, as corny and predictable as it sometimes seems, this “Battle” works on a visceral level, playing out like a video game that has you hooked.
review
What: “Battle: Los Angeles”
Starring: Aaron Eckhart, Michelle Rodriguez, Michael Pena, Bridget Moynahan
Directed by: Jonathan Liebesman
Running time: 114 minutes
Rated: PG-13 for intense war violence and destruction and for language