Battle: Los Angeles is Jonathan Liebesman‘s newest film, starring Aaron Eckhart, Ramon Rodriguez, Hoyt Jim Parrack, Michael Peña and Michelle Rodriguez.

Plot:
Just when Sgt Michael Nantz (Aaron Eckhart) officially retires, the world is invaded by aliens. Which is quite shitty, but what can you do. So Nantz gets called back to help 2nd Lt William Martinez (Ramon Rodriguez) and his platoon on their mission to save Los Angeles.

I know that that plot description is really short, but honestly – that’s all there is to it. The rest of the film are shootings, explosions and military slang and it’s all very boring. So boring, in fact, that I honestly fell asleep during the film, even though it’s really, really loud.

The movie spends a lot of time trying to introduce every soldier of the platoon, identifying them by name and giving all of them a bit of backstory. I guess they hoped that you start to care for  these characters that way, but honestly, for that, there were too many of them and I felt like I was going to be quizzed five minutes later. [“Name the soldier who’s getting married!”, “Lockett unknowingly hits on whose sister?”] So I desperately tried to learn all the names and put it all together, only to give up a few minutes in with, “most of them are going to die anyway. Who cares?”

That’s just not a good way to start a movie.

With a start like that, it would be wrong to say that Liebesman can’t keep up the tension, since there was never any tension to begin with. And still, the movie grows more boring with every minute. The aliens aren’t scary, their actions don’t make sense and after a while you just hope for them to stop shooting, so your sleep will be less interrupted.

The whole film feels like it was supposed to be an ego shooter. And as a game, it would have had chances to work, even if still wouldn’t have been brilliant. As a movie, it just pretty much sucked the life out of you.

Summarising: skip it.