Od lat na całym świecie - Buenos Aires, Seul, Francja, Niemcy czy Chiny - dokumentowane są przypadki pojawienia się UFO. Ale w roku 2011 to, co kiedyś było tylko znakiem na niebie, stanie się przerażającą rzeczywistością. Ziemia zostanie zaatakowana przez nieznane siły. Podczas gdy ludzie będą świadkami upadku największych miast świata, Los Angeles stanie się ostatnim bastionem ludzkości w bitwie, której nikt się nie spodziewał. I to przed sierżantem marines (Aaron Eckhart) i jego nowym plutonem będzie postawione zadanie starcia z wrogiem, z jakim nigdy do tej pory nie mieli do czynienia.
Battle: Los Angeles is a war movie first, science fiction second. It's got it all: a burned-out retiring sergeant who gets drawn back in because, dammit, the Marines need him; the guy who's about to get married; the guy who's still a virgin; the guy suffering from shell shock and who just might crack; the newbie officer with a lot of book learning who you just know is going to freeze under pressure and have to be shepherded by that burned-out sergeant, who learned his lessons on the battlefield… and so much more. There's not a moment in this movie you haven't seen before--the only twist is that the enemy is alien, so whatever shred of concern you might have for raining heavy artillery on a fellow human being can be cheerfully cast aside. But clichés are clichés because they are efficient and effective, and despite the profound familiarity of
Battle: Los Angeles, there's no denying the movie rips along (though two-thirds of the way through you may have forgotten who was the virgin and who was the shell-shocked guy--but really, does it matter?). The look owes a debt to
District 9, a hand-held, vérité grittiness, with most of the CGI carefully given a dingy, dirty look so that it meshes with the urban landscape. Aaron Eckhart (
The Dark Knight) does an impressive job of spitting out ham-fisted dialogue like he really, really means it, while the rest of the cast is suitably generic. This is an unrepentant love letter to the military; many viewers, faced with the unsettling chaos and moral ambiguities of real wars, will find this mythologizing not only soothing, but even moving.
--Bret Fetzer
Special Features
- Behind the Battle
- Aliens in L.A.
- Preparing for Battle
- Creating L.A.
