A Blackhawk Down In District 9 On Independence Day

There's nothing remotely original about Battle Los Angeles. Most mainstream reviews have it pegged as a cross between Ridley Scott's Blackhawk Down (which is the film it most closely resembles) and Roland Emmerich's Independence Day, but there's elements of District 9, Skyline and, most prominently, the story structure of Aliens. So, like Jim Cameron's classic, we have a group of soldiers sent into a populated community that's been over run by hostile aliens with the mission of extracting the population and fighting the E.Ts. There's the small child, soldier and civilian woman that form a 'family unit', there's a green commanding officer who has to make the noble sacrificee for the group with a grenade, and the race to escape the township against the ticking clock before it gets blown to smithereens.

But despite the familiar story and directing style, the cardboard characters, abysmal dialogue, corny male bonding and patriotic flag waving Battle LA is bloody entertaining. It's a premise movie...a "men on a mission movie" with a simple objective...rescue the civilians in the next three hours before we flatten the crap out of the city. Add to that the intense hand held docu-camera style of Blackhawk and Private Ryan and you have a raw, pulse pounding combat movie that drags the audience into the centre of the action. We don't care much for the scantily written characters, but we can imagine ourselves trapped behind enemy lines with the awe struck grunts and try to work out how the hell we'd get out of that situation. And sometimes that's enough for an adrenaline rush at the flicks.

It's dumb, the drama scenes are embarrassing, the humour (what little of it there is) flat, and the cast mostly forgettable (apart from Eckhart and Rodriguez). But if you're willing to accept this as a pure entertainment, bullshit action movie white knuckle rollercoaster ride then you're in for a major treat. Michael Bay would be impressed.