MOVIES ARE MAGIC

Battle: Los Angeles

Independence Day, Cloverfield and District 9, in various measures, did their part to contribute to the rich space-invasion science-fiction genre. Battle: Los Angeles recycles all of them, while adding nothing except running time. This is a forgettable waste of a film that squanders its special effects on underachieving apocalyptic set pieces. Even when in the mood for mindless entertainment, one can overlook only so many plot holes. Long stretches of worthless dialogue and inane digressions are even less forgivable.  

Aaron Eckhart anchors the cast as Staff Sgt. Michael Nance. We meet him at his I’m-getting-too-old-for-this moment. In the next scene, he is discharged from duty and faces down a civilian’s life. Yet a few scenes later, he’s back in uniform, in charge of a platoon. Sort of. He’s “needed out there, to look over things” says his superior, but a guy named Rodriguez is technically in control. “Just don’t lose my paperwork,” Eckhart retorts. Speaking of misplaced paperwork, a soldier with post-traumatic stress syndrome visits his psychologist, who denies him clearance on combat. He then boards the same aircraft. Whatever. Supposedly, the military considers this a simple non-combat mission. Yeah, right. I think the military would be onto it by this point. 

The first act of the movie establishes a rainbow of stock characters very, very broadly. What it fails to do is establish any context or meaning for the entire plot of the film. By focusing solely on military personnel, we have little understanding of the state of Los Angeles, or the world, except from bits of news footage - foreboding apocalypse - and through tertiary characters - the fiance of one of the soldiers continues to plan her dream wedding. Given that the world is being utterly decimated, it’s hard to believe that soldiers are shopping for tuxedos. Nevertheless, we at least comprehend that there remains a world to be saved, despite news reports that every major city on Earth - including San Francisco and San Diego - has been destroyed, and that Los Angeles stands alone. LA is so full of itself. 

Asteroids hit. The biggest set-piece of this clunky, awkward film is featured within 30 minutes. You’ve seen the billboards. The low-lying parts of LA go up in flames; the skyline, inexplicably, remains untouched. But the visuals work. It looks pretty cool. Predictably, the soundtrack is of the sweeping, melodramatic, orchestral variety. If the movie kept this pace going, I’d be satisfied. To witness mass destruction of our planet is an oddly blissful sight. That’s what this movie advertises, and that’s what I’m paying to see. Instead, the film meanders into pointless military dialogue, orders given, missions re-stated, again without any significance, and very little pay-off. The plot is of the Saving Private Ryan variety, and a real misfire. The problems with the plot are too numerous to nitpick.

Director Jonathan Liebesman (Darkness Falls, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning) gives us lots of little moments of suspense, but mostly, he gives us tedium. He puts Eckhart and the rest (who all become forgettable) into tight spaces, hiding from mechi-bio-beasts who may or may not lurk behind corners. The film is predominently dark and claustrophobic.  Jonathan Liebesman and District 9 director Neill Blomkamp both hail from Johannesburg, South Africa. Blomkamp infused his tale of alien invaders with a sharp political attitude, which sparked interesting debate and rejuvenated the genre. All Liebesman seems to have taken away from District 9, though, is how to design a really huge space ship. It looks exactly the same. That’s not all Liebesman has reappropriated. There’s a laborious scene in which Eckhart decides they need to dissect the alien to know exactly how to kill it, which felt much more natural and relevant in Independence Day. The camerawork feels lifted from Cloverfield, which was a fun and exciting addition to this genre, shot in a Blair Witch Project documentary feel. Given that Battle: LA plays nothing like a documentary, the shaky camera is simply distracting. For narrative inspiration, Liebesman has lifted the final act from Star Wars. Perhaps Hollywood is happy to roll out the same films, the same stories, over and over in order to cash in on the tried and true. But it’s offensive, lazy filmmaking.  

To be fair, originality isn’t the be-all-end-all of art and cinema. Execution is far more important, and it’s here where this film really suffers. Granted, it takes care of the bare minimum expected of such a blockbuster: explosions, frenzy, chaos, and a chiseled, sympathetic leading man. But it parses out its action at a terribly arrhythmic pace, and fills the gaps with the most boring of asides. How many long goodbyes do we need? There is no sense that this is a metaphor, that what’s happening matters in some deeper way, that anything adds up. No emotional resonance despite the many lobs it makes at our heartstrings. No intellectual stimulation. And frankly, not enough cathartic mayhem. It’s a pro-war propaganda piece that undersells the human capacity for violence.   

James Cameron’s Avatar showed us a foreign environment of natural beauty under siege by imperialist forces. U.S. corporate interests wanted Pandora’s unobtainium. It was a cutely packaged metaphor for our military efforts in the Middle East. The tragic lie of that film is that it portrayed the natives as victorious - with the help of a white man (classic Hollywood patronizing), the people of Pandora defended their land. That’s not what happens in real life. In reality, U.S. imperialism has ravaged the Middle East, Asia, Africa, South America… even its own Native Americans. In Battle: Los Angeles, it is our own land that these soldiers defend, and even though these aliens are superior to us in the field of interplanetary war and galactic technology, we somehow prevail by destroying their death star, or whatever. With all the talk of the apocalypse, with all the natural disasters happening, it would be refreshing to see a Battle: Los Angeles that has the bravery to show LA totally annihilated. Why not? Instead, we fight against all odds, “win”, and go on to fight another day. This is a conservative motion picture from a conservative, profit-obsessed Hollywood system that preys on a nation’s most base bloodlust for total violence. That it doesn’t even deliver this is absurd. 

1. charwoo liked this
2. moviesaremagic posted this