Transformers. Cloverfield. District 9. Skyline. The Invasion. War of the Worlds. The Day the Earth Stood Still - the list goes on and on. Hollywood clearly hasn't been shy of showcasing fictional alien invasions on the big screen over the last few years, with inevitably varied results. The latest to add to that extensive list is Battle: Los Angeles, perhaps the one of the most relentless and ferocious of the bunch.
The film takes places approximately five months from now when there are sudden reports of meteors landing miles off the coast of major cities around the world. At least meteors are the first assumption, but the government and army soon discover that the earth is actually being invaded by an unknown life-form.
We specifically follow Sergeant Michael Nantz, a veteran Marine who has just handed in his resignation when he gets forced back into action when the invasion strikes. He and the rest of those in his platoon then try to fight back against the invading alien hordes after they have already overtaken several other cities on the West Coast of the United States and elsewhere worldwide. “We’ve lost communications with Tokyo, Rio and New York… We cannot lose Los Angeles,” dauntingly sums up the mission.
Battle: Los Angeles is an uncompromising, intense film. It thrusts us right into the thick of things right from the get-go (it shows us the colossal damage to the city straight away before jumping back to a slightly less hectic time, showing us how things lead up to things kicking off) and pretty much never letting up for the whole two hours. Some might say the film has one note and plays it to death and to be fair that’s not an entirely untrue statement. However, the film does what a lot of alien invasion flicks don’t and sticks to its powerful guns (pardon the pun) without wavering from its objective.
.jpg?t=20130517094513)
Article comments