Verdict:
No doubt there was a moment in many gamers’ lives when a cut-scene from a game was so captivating and pretty that the gamer thought how it would be cool if this cutscenes ran the entire length of a movie. Artists like Hideo Kojima have tried creating cinematic and dramatic cutscenes that invoke filmmaking, and there are games out there cut-scenes that dwarf the actual gameplay, but Battle Los Angeles, hands down, is the longest game cut-scene I have seen, where the gamer is never given control. This film is also proof that game cutscenes don’t make the best movies. And is that a good thing?
The design team outdid itself. The graphics seamlessly merge and interact with the live action materials and humans. The movement of alien objects is fluent and realistic, reminiscent of District 9. The camera work is great for showing the scale and chaos of the conflict. There is so much debris and smoke everywhere.
But then sooner or later the plot makes a rude appearance and actors open their mouths and begin to speak and that is when it all comes apart at the seams.
The alien menace is introduced, and their tech looks impressive, but the aliens just randomly attack our group of soldiers from all sides, as if the aliens were a group of Arabic insurgents or L.A. gangsters. The audience is expected to believe that a few soldiers can stand a chance against a force of extraterrestrials that are ages ahead of humans in terms of technology.
I swear at one point I heard a soldier in the background yell “RPG!”. The alien lasers are stopped by human helmets. You’re basically just watching a Black Hawk Down with aliens instead of Somalis. This concept is quite funny.
Firefights are well done, yes, but that is all the movie is good at. That is all it is: a big shootout. Storyline? Nope, Believable human characters? Not a chance. This realization will make you want to fast forward past the all the corny shallow failed attempts at character development to the point when the special effects start rolling again.
But even with all the action scenes, the movie still manages to be boring at times. There is a sense of small scale as the viewer follows a handful of marines through a few blocks of war-torn Los Angeles, as the title of the movie suggests. After the plot is set up, there are few culminating moments.
The acting is not the problem. The actors themselves are fine. Michelle Rodriguez is here to act tough again. The public is also familiar with Eckhart, who’s playing the main protagonist with at least some skill and manages to elevate the non-existing script. The supporting cast is there primarily to shoot heroically and/or to die heroically, but they do their job. The issue is in the writing: the mismatched, generic outbursts of melodramatic war talk could have either been replaced with something better written or taken out entirely. Everything about this movie feels flat, especially the writing.