Battle: Los Angeles User Reviews

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American cities have been attacked and ruined many times in the history of film. Los Angeles in particular has suffered several alien invasions and an active volcano to boot. This latest invasion attempts to crank the action to the max and wow audiences with intense action and fear.
 
Aaron Eckhart, much like Liam Neeson, appears to be reinventing himself as a latter-day action star. With a fantastic performance in The Dark Knight under his belt he has moved on to a project which throws almost all subtlety out the window. Actors of his calibre don’t often front moves like Battle LA. However this is just what the movie needed to make itself stand out from the pack and Eckhart puts in another great performance where he could have gotten away with less.

From the opening title sequence to the climax the movie is essentially a runaway train of gunfights, explosions and heightened emotion. The standard genre distractions are cut down to a minimum or cut entirely. Eckhart’s staff sergeant and his new unit have their issues but much of the emotion is put across through rapid but loaded close ups rather than extended sequences of dramatic dialogue and war-room arguments that would feel out of place. The quieter moments are used to great effect to give some depth to the characters but it hardly matters. Characters in this situation aren’t in need of any more personality than they are given.

Battle LA does not make the mistake that previous genre efforts like Independence Day made where the 2 hour film attempts to achieve too much. The focus is clear; the excessively shaky camera follows one unit through its 2 day ordeal and skilfully avoids putting the president in a jet fighter or introducing nuclear warheads with computer viruses.

Battle LA succeeds in doing exactly what its creators designed it for.  Striking the perfect balance between substance and style it is a guilty pleasure and not ashamed to be entertainment over art. It is the product of a clear goal and modest but finely crafted storytelling ambition. Critics may say that for a film with such a narrow focus it should have a more significant human angle but that misses the point. If you want to see raw, dirty combat and destruction without feeling like the plot was thinly draped over as an afterthought then you can do much worse.