Qwerty Norris
Posts: 3152
Joined: 26/10/2005
From: Edinburgh
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Being a relatively avid gamer, I feel I can speak with a decent level of authority to express the pleasure of playing the highly popular but no less efficient Call of Duty series. As a computer game, the first person shooter manages to capture both the panic and adrenaline rush of being stuck in a diabolical combat-based situation as you play it. However, like any other computer game, watching someone else having a go and enjoying themselves is a different experience altogether - a dull and tedious affair that makes you feel excluded from any developing drama occurring on screen.
That in essence nails the problem with Battle : Los Angeles, which has undoubtedly been inspired both by the enormous success of the various COD instalments, as well as a recent renaissance in mainstream cinema for alien invasion flicks - the crowning achievement being Neil Blomkamp's District 9. Yet, whilst both of those managed to entertain in very different ways, fellow South African Jonathan Liebesman and his $100 million science fiction romp achieves no sense of entertainment whatsoever – unless you count the concept of watching someone else playing a computer game a hoot.
Without question, the vast majority of its narrative plays out like a continuous loop of the Modern Warfare levels -but not the good ones involving the wonderfully-tached Captain Price and the various factions of the SAS. Battle : Los Angeles in essence, feels like watching someone else playing an endless repetition of levels involving the faceless, personality-free US military who run from one area to another, doing nothing but shoot anything that moves, occasionally explain the threadbare plot to one another and lose a battalion member per location in the process.
This of course would be fine if you either gave a monkeys bottom about any of the poor suckers fighting against our extra terrestrial oppressors or were thrilled by the ongoing carnage on display. In truth however, the beginning twenty minutes of rubbish exposition will, if anything, make you root even more for our alien overlords to crush the moronic imbeciles that we're forced to care about for the films two hour duration. Not that it truly matters however, as aside from Aaron Eckhart's instantly recognizable moody staff sergeant, once everyone straps on their helmets and combat gear you'll instantly forget which of the characters has a pregnant wife, a mental health issue or is simply a grade A bell-end after drinking a few bottles of some well-placed alcoholic product placement.
And then there's the "action." There's no thrill to the proceedings. There's no "wow” factor. There's nothing memorable or remarkable about any of the set-pieces. There is no sense of drama, of panic, of insanity, of anything being truly at stake. There are plenty of things happening yet at the same time absolutely nothing happens at all. There is never a sense of a world on its knees fighting for its life – just a series of middle of the road sequences that have been done so much better before from the likes of proper ET from hell nonsense such as Independence Day to the paranoid adrenaline-junkie orientated dementia of the Hurt Locker. It attempts to combine the idea of fighting against beings from outer space in a contemporary warfare setting like those of Iraq & Afghanistan (or the Call of Duty : Modern Warfare series), yet only achieves in being both a rubbish war film and a mediocre alien movie – and an expensive one in that! A film whose budget could have funded the cost of four District 9s, two hundred Monsters or god forbid, even ten Skyline's! Once again, mainstream Hollywood has excelled itself in wasting a considerable amount of money in a genre film when others have managed to create something vastly superior for a fraction of the price.
2/5
< Message edited by Qwerty Norris -- 26/3/2011 3:39:41 AM >
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Qwerty's Top 10 of 2013 (so far)
1. Zero Dark Thirty
2. No
3. In The Fog
4. Good Vibrations
5. McCullin
6. Beyond the Hills
7. The Place Beyond the Pines
8. Wreck-it Ralph
9. Shell
10. In The House
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