You, Sir, Have Sunk, Sir, My Battleship!!!!

In the mid-nineties Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay were masters of the art form that is the summer blockbuster with crackers like The Rock and Armageddon. But in the last decade Bay and Bruckheimer’s standards have slipped giving up glossy, expensive and boring dross like Pirates Of The Caribbean sequels, Prince Of Persia, The Sorcerers Apprentice and Bad Boys II plus the Transformers sequels. With both of them having let us down for so long now the world has been waiting for someone to take up the mantle of spectacularly shot, outrageously overproduced, incredibly dumb, mainstream action drama…and it finally looks like that time has arrived in the unlikely form of Universal Pictures and Peter Berg.

Yep, Michael Mann prodigy Peter Berg, the man behind Friday Night Lights and The Kingdom, has stepped into the arena of mega-budget blockbuster bullshit to adapt the classic board game Battleship. Berg takes what Bay used to do well and matches him with a popcorn flick that’s action packed, glossy (yes, you’re talking sunset drenched vistas), spectacular and as corny as a super-charged Independence Day. Just to make sure we all know it’s on the same, patriotic, flag waving page as Armageddon, it’s even got a slow motion “Right Stuff” march of heroes walking towards camera…even if they are a bunch of retired navy dudes.

Story wise, this is your basic sea story (boy goes to see and return a man) that closely follows the through line of 2009’s Star Trek reboot. The film is peppered with strategies, tactics, cunning plans and brinkmanship that up the suspense as you’re trying to figure out just how the good guys are going to out-manoeuvre the far superior, alien invasion force. The top notch effects work shine, the classic rock soundtrack rules (Stone Temple Pilots, AC/DC, Creedence) and the cast are, for the most part, having fun with John Carter’s Taylor Kitsch finally displaying in full the rugged charisma that starring roles in two 2012 $200 million blockbusters have promised.

My biggest complaint is that spectacularly poor acting on display from a dire few, namely Gregory D. Gadson (probably cast as he was a real life soldier and paraplegic), Thor’s Tadanobu Asano makes a wooden Japanese ship’s captain, John Tui was probably cast for his gigantic physique but not much else, and pop starlet Rihanna just about squeaks by into acceptability. Surprisingly, supermodel Brooklyn Decker acquits herself well as the female lead.

Make no mistake, Battleship is dumber than an Egyptian pyramid constructed of pure dumb, but it’s ridiculously good fun, stuffed with tons of humour alongside the effects heavy, sci-fi, water bound action. And it’s just the icing on the cake when you realise the characters are actually playing the board game on which the movie is based.