A Marine platoon faces off against an alien invasion in Los Angeles. Stars Aaron Eckhart and Michelle Rodriguez.
This sci-fi actioner takes its cue from real, reported events - referred to as 'Battle of Los Angeles'. On February 25th, 1942, just after 2am, hundreds of thousands of people witnessed something in the skies above Los Angeles. Army planes were scrambled to intercept, while anti-aircraft guns fired over 1,400 rounds for more than two hours. Nothing was hit or recovered (asides from friendly fire killing three civilians), the object disappeared. This event happened less than three months after the US entered World War II because of the attack on Pearl Harbour. Read more at Wikipedia.
There’s simply no way you can say that World Invasion: Battle Los Angeles is a good film. Its promise of showing a realistic portrayal of a sci-fi war zone is broken, the CGI of the invading aliens is extremely ropey and each and every character is a walking, talking, cardboard cut-out. Worst of all, the movie breaks its own established rules – the damn near indestructible aliens at the start of the film become nothing more than fragile little kittens half way through.
Despite all this, however, WI:BLA is still an entertaining film. By amply delivering big, dumb, brainless, action-filled, cliché-ridden cinematic fun that explodes at you relentlessly in big, dumb, brainless, action-filled, cliché-ridden bursts, the film manages to shoot away all your perfectly valid criticisms. You find yourself switching off and merrily enjoying the action-packed ride.
The story, for what it’s worth, is that aliens want all our water and are prepared to attack the bejebus out of us to get it. Rather than focusing on the big picture of a global attack, the movie instead zooms onto a lone marine platoon tasked with rescuing a group of civilians trapped behind enemy lines in the LA warzone.
So while you can’t call the movie good, you can comfortably say that it’s a ton of fun. With admirable and steely-eyed conviction, star Aaron Eckhart does his darnedest to singlehandedly drag the film to a higher level but World Invasion: Battle Los Angeles is nothing more than sci-fi schlock, albeit sci-fi schlock of the highest order.
By Karl Puschmann, Flicks.co.nz
A pathetic piece of crap glorifying war and full of stupid boring American hero bla bla. Leaving a "normal" person fighting to throw up. Almost everything stolen from other movies but changed to suit some teenage males fighting to regain brain function due to overdose of testosterone.
great fun
This was fun, but has way to much heroic cornball flag waving nonsense. I did like the way the alien ships didn't have some sort of magic ability to hover, but used little jets to stay up. The alien tech was ahead of us, but not thousands of years ahead of us. Check out how the music changes when the humans are winning. It's a fun film, but way too overdone. It just got silly.
It was true american action movie as it protrayed a great leader taking on everything eventhough he lost faith in himself due to the incident that his never returned from their operation. he gain the trust from his conrades when they continue to fight for him.
Fast pan and zoom designed to make it look 'real' just gave me a headache. Lousy dialogue, Michelle Rodriguez as a grunt (again) and very little close ups of the aliens made this a teaser at best.
Here's a science-fiction film that's an insult to the words "science" and "fiction," and the hyphen in between them. You want to cut it up to clean under your fingernails.
What? Really? Someone's made another tired and lousy War of The Worlds ripoff already? But I'm still picking bits of popcorn out of my beard from Skyline.
Pretty much cardboard, down to the heroic patriotic speeches, and less distinctive even than last year's scarcely stellar "Skyline," which trashed the same city. Things blow up good and Eckhart is a classier actor than his role warrants, but we've all been here before.
The deadening and sometimes laughable litany of shouted military-style dialogue eventually pummels into submission any hope for fresh creative angles on this well-worn format.
As it lurches from Act II to Act III, Battle: Loss Angeles reveals itself to be a lousy movie.
We've been told the NZ release date for this flick is Thursday, 24th Mar 2011.
Release date: March 24th 2011.
We haven't received times for this movie in this location yet. However these are updated as cinemas announce them, so check back soon. Hopefully the lovely cinemas in your location will choose to play it shortly. ~Ed.
