Unwatched DVD Pile of Shame: Battle Los Angeles (2011)

I got up shockingly early today, I’ve never been a good sleeper (which is strange in itself, to be bad at something that only requires you to be unconscious for 6-8 hours), but I was up and about extra early for no real reason.

Having already completed a fair few tasks, I glanced at the Unwatched Pile Of DVDs of Shame and decided to potentially reward my hard work. I say potentially reward as it’s never a sure thing from this selection.

Battle Los Angeles was a modest box office success, but suffered from some of the worst reviews in recent memory. Many a DVD has made it into the pile out of morbid curiosity, and this is no exception.

Long story short, aliens invade earth and a group of Marines fight to reclaim L.A. This may seem like a simplistic synopsis but there really isn’t much more to it. On paper it sounds like a solid Friday night with a takeaway sort of flick.

Director Jonathan Liebesman offers up war movie clichés, poor character development and a plot so by the numbers it’s insulting that it takes almost 2 hours to arrive at its utterly predictable conclusion.

Aaron Eckhart is a good actor, but he is miscast as the soon to be retiring Sgt. Michael Nantz. Eckhart has clearly been taking acting notes from his Dark Knight co-star Christian Bale, as he’s channeling Batman’s gruff voice through Nantz.

There are no real stand out performances and the endless explosions and alien attacks become tedious, I’m all for a big dumb action film but this left me cold and I just didn’t care about any of the characters. The movie’s ending hammers home the message of unity and joining forces to overcome our common enemy, it doesn’t try and be big or clever about it either.

So blatant is the message they may as well have had somebody say “Hey, look at that! When we work together and not against each other we can really do great things”.

Liebesman was also behind Wrath of the Titans, a film which managed the rare cinematic feat of gathering even more hateful reviews than either Battle Los Angeles or Clash of The Titans.

There are few occasions where I would honestly rather watch the Mockbuster version over the real thing. Battle of Los Angeles was made for less than $1, at least the filmmakers knew it was a pile of crap and didn’t try to make it anything more than that.

I know I bring it on myself, giving awful looking movies a chance – sometimes the critics get it universally right.