Battle: Los Angeles

OPENING: 03/11/2011

STUDIO: Columbia Pictures

RUN TIME: 116 min

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
03.11.11

Opening Statement
About midway through the first half of Jonathon Liebesman’s Battle: Los Angeles I realized the film was not going to fulfill my lofty expectations. Alas my instincts proved correct. LA disappoints on every level imaginable. The heroes sent to eradicate a swarm of alien marauders lack personality and dimension. Likewise the aliens fail to leave an impression, as they are poorly designed, badly imagined and lacking in initiative. What is the point of sacking a city if you possess neither the logic nor the abilities to pull off the task?

Facts of the Case
The world is under attack–again–by alien forces who are attempting to seize the world’s water supply. Into the fold drops Staff Seargant Michael Nantz (Aaron Eckhart) who must lead a rag tag group of Marines through an intense battle to save Los Angeles.

The Evidence
Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of Battle: LA is that it never reaches its full potential. Liebesman’s film strives for the brilliant combat sequences of Black Hawk Down meshed with the close encounters of War of the Worlds, but instead comes across as a hybrid of the awful Independence Day and the badly executed Vietnam flick We Were Soldiers. And so, LA feels flat, hokey, and even contrived. There’s nary a moment of spectacle found within as even the action scenes feel redundant and poorly executed; lacking the type of visual excitement maestros such as Michael Bay, Ridley Scott and James Cameron typically demonstrate.

What we have here is a B-movie extravaganza that might have enjoyed a successful run (and fewer explosions) on the Syfy channel. On the big screen Battle: Los Angeles trips and tumbles, like its alien invaders, over its own ineptitude.

Filled with the sort of campiness that would make even Roger Corman blush, Battle: LA dissolves under its inability to adequately capture the horrors it strives so hard to achieve. Aliens attack, people die, cities fall, but not in the way you expect. While the City of Angels lingers in the backdrop, Liebesman, who brought us Darkness Falls and the insufferable Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, focuses his story on a handful of grunts, choosing to steer clear of the mass carnage in favor of a smaller, personable plot. That’s fine if you’re making “Skirmish in LA,” finer still if you present characters who are meaningful, or worthwhile, but when the title of your film promises a “battle” you better damn well deliver something epic.

The problem here is that Liebersman and screenwriter Christopher Bertolini (The General’s Daughter) offer little in the way of narrative intrigue, or imagination. The aliens’ design drips with blandness; like a rip off of those found in Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, except with fishbowls instead of heads. They’re simply not intimidating enough to worry about. Even their ships, which at times look like those found in a Lego collection, offer nothing in the way of visual stimulation. Films like Independence Day may have sucked, but at least they offered imagination, not to mention humor.

The heroes in LA, led by the estimable Aaron Eckhart, die too quick and too often to care about. None possess much in the way of personality–they’re defined by their accents. Some were southern, one was a girl. And they’re stupid. At one point, after watching an escaping helicopter go down in flames, the squad’s Lieutenant (Ramon Rodriguez) suggests boarding a bus to clear the vicinity before it explodes. “We have to get out of here fast!” he exclaims, failing to deduce the incomprehensible logic of this statement. Surprisingly the bus actually proves quite acute to their situation later on, which causes the audience to believe a) the Lieutenant was not as dumb as he initially appeared, or b) the aliens are not altogether bright or threatening. If you can’t slow down a friggin’ bus, then what makes you think you stand a chance against an army toting weapons of mass destruction?

Such is the logic of Battle: LA, a film that narrows the aliens’ objective down to obtaining water to power their machines. Okay. I’m no general, but I could literally think of dozens of ways in which to set about fulfilling such a task. Here’s a thought: don’t land near a fortified military installation. Or better yet, land in Antarctica and strategize from there. Actually, the aliens could have just asked politely and I’m sure America would have obliged…

I guess that’s the problem with alien invasion flicks. On the one hand you must demonstrate the awesome power of an extraterrestrial species capable of overthrowing the world in a single swoop, but then you must also find and exploit their weakness, or else the film would end on a (gasp!) dark note. The humans must prevail; otherwise there would be no story. Independence Day destroyed its alien foes by uploading a virus into the “Microsoft-ran Alien Hard Drive.” HG Wells (and Spielberg) wiped out their foes with germs. M. Night Shyamalan vanquished his with water and a baseball bat. Tim Burton used country music. None of these scenarios proved satisfactory, leaving audiences hankering for something more…believable.

Sadly, LA does not correct this narrative flaw. In actuality, it attempts something much simpler.

Take, for example, the location of the “mother ship,” which controls the numerous drones occasionally seen soaring across the skyline, and which must be destroyed in order for our heroes to prevail. Something so important should be located outside the battlegrounds, out of harm’s way, or at least protected by more than a few inadequate aliens. Nope. Here the ship rests within a few clicks of the action, guarded only by a few worthless drones, and a half dozen or so alien sentinels. Huh? Shouldn’t the main ship or the one controlling your entire army, be situated elsewhere, and surrounded by fleets of your best fighters?

I understand the need to bend logic at times for the sake of cinematic spectacle, especially when aliens are concerned, but for a film striving so hard to achieve realism, Battle: LA feels amazingly absurd. In other words, District 9 this is not.

Earlier I stated my “lofty expectations” accrued during the massive (and impressive) marketing campaign. The TV ads, trailers and posters suggested something new and unique, a fresh, exciting take on the alien invasion flick. Perhaps I carried too much hope into the theater, or maybe I’ve seen too many movies. All I can say is that a film’s purpose is to entertain, enlighten or inspire. Battle: LA achieved none of these, but it sure made me laugh. At least it was better than Skyline.

Closing Statement
Battle: Los Angeles reaches for greatness, but falls short thanks to poor production qualities, a mediocre script and bland special effects.

The Verdict
5/10

The Happening

Opening Date: 06/13/2008

STUDIO: Fox

TRAILER: Trailer

ACCOMPLICES: Official Site

The Charge

We’ve sensed it. We’ve seen the signs. Now… it’s happening.

Opening Statement

The only thing happening here is a case study on “How to destroy a promising directorial career.”

Facts of the Case
Something strange is happening in NYC. The media claims it’s terrorists using undetectable neurotoxins to induce mass suicide. But similar incidents are being reported up and down the East Coast in rapid succession. Newlyweds Elliot (Mark Wahlberg) and Alma (Zooey Deschanel) are experiencing relationship problems and use the impetus of the event to get out of Philly and stay with friends in the country. But when their train is stopped in the middle of nowhere, they and their fellow passengers are left stranded, with an unknown enemy closing in. But how do you fight or flee from something when you don’t know what it is? Conspiracy theorists believe its a government, biochemical weapons program accident. But what if it was something else together — something so far fetched no one would ever believe it?

The Evidence

I don’t think we’ve ever experienced this before; the unraveling of a talent so promising it defies explanation. M. Night Shyamalan wowed audiences and critics alike with his sophomore effort, The Sixth Sense. His third film, the superhero adventure Unbreakable, was a bit of a letdown, but he came back strong with the invasion thriller Signs. When The Village crumbled and Lady in the Water tanked, Hollywood began to wonder if this was a run of bad luck, or if his early work was just a fluke. After enduring The Happening, it’s safe to say the man has lost whatever it was he had.

The premise is not half bad — an unsuspecting populace attacked by an unseen enemy, leaving them nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. It’s almost Hitchockian and composer James Newton Howard’s homage to Bernard Herrmann draws us right in. Sadly, that perception holds our attention for about 10 minutes before the wheels come off. Shyamalan may have set out to create a profound social comment on environmental stewardship, but it’s all smoke and no fire, never delving deep enough into the far reaching ramifications of what’s occurring nor the ultimate change humanity must make to overcome its ignorant ways. Instead we have a “green” version of Night of the Living Dead meets The Invisible Man.

This is a shockingly bad film. From the dialogue and performances, to the individual plot points and the story’s denouement, Shyamalan has hit rock bottom. This one note message picture would be best served as a Twilight Zone or Outer Limits episode, in the hands of someone who actually knew what to do with it. There’s about 20 minutes of real meat to the tale, with 71 minutes of visual padding. If you love long shots of tall grass and trees blowing in the wind, there is plenty for you to enjoy. For everyone else, we’re stuck with some of the most embarrassing acting to come out of a major studio picture in quite some time.

The ridiculous attempt at portraying any authentic fear-based emotion takes you right out of the film. Long vacant stares, women screaming, children crying, people running for their lives — it’s so bad it’s impossible to believe any of it. Did the creative team not watch the dailies? Was all the good footage stolen or lost in some tragic fire, leaving the editors to piece together only what appears on screen? It’s mind blowing. How does someone make Zooey Deschanel look like an actress doing bad community theatre? And what in god’s name is Betty Buckley doing playing an off the grid and off her rocker old lady? For a split second, you almost believe she may be responsible for the story’s ultimate evil. But even that would have been too interesting a choice for this film.

The worst offense of all is that Shyamalan attempts to cover these gaping creative holes by distracting us with scenes of people committing suicide in horrifying and unintentionally hilarious ways (e.g. Man in the tiger pit). This isn’t storytelling; it’s bad performance art inspired by Faces of Death.

Even Shyamalan’s infusion of humor into what should have been a tension-filled story falls flat. We have crazy plant guy and his wife extolling the virtues of hot dogs; Barney Fife-like junior military officers trying to provide a voice of calm reassurance; and what amounts to the two smart ass kids from Return of the Swamp Thing aged to teens, supplying Elliot with relationship advice and taking on paranoid locals in true Rambo fashion. Somebody give this guy a copy of Blake Synder’s Save the Cat.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

The two redeeming qualities of The Happening are Mark Wahlberg — the only effective piece in this obtuse puzzle, and even he stumbles at times — and John Leguizamo, who bails halfway through the picture. That’s it. There’s nothing else to recommend.

Closing Statement

Save your money. The Happening is not worth seeing on the big screen, and may not even be worth a rental when it comes to DVD. As the man sitting across the aisle from me proclaimed when the lights came up, “Man, that was crap!”

The Verdict

Move along. There’s nothing to see here.

Score: 2/10