
I followed the development of Battle: Los Angeles for many months ever since my aggregation software pulled the search term "U.S. Marines" and "aliens" automatically from the news wire. I became intrigued when I discovered that Chris Bertolini the writer of one of my favourite military thrillers - The General's Daughter, was scripting a tale of invasion focusing on a small unit of Marines with Aaron The Dark Knight Eckhart and my favourite Hollywood bad-girl Michelle Rodriguez [Avatar] in starring roles. In addition, director Jonathan Liebesman said he would take his inspiration from modern war-movies and adopt a style from watching footage of real U.S. Forces in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Eckhart was a great if unusual choice for Nantz, he's square-jawed enough for a battle-hardened Marine NCO and went through a tough training cycle in weapons training and drills before he and the other actors were in a boot camp situation for 3 weeks. Eckhart adopted "the method" for the movie and "became" SSgt Nantz for the duration of filming. Upon breaking his upper arm when he fell off a ledge during an action sequence, he continued to work for the remainder of filming without having it put in a cast as that opportunity would not have been available in the field. Rodriguez portrayed Air Force Intelligence Technical Sergeant Elena Santos and should be given credit for not following her usual moody authority-bucking persona as she joins up with the Marines after being separated from her parent unit. The rest of the cast is rounded out with Cory Hardrict, Gino Anthony Pesi, Ne-Yo, James Hiroyuki Liao, Adetokumboh McCormack and Michael Shooter Peña with Bridget Blue Bloods Moynahan.

The script is fairly diabolical, let’s be honest here. This is so far from Shakespeare it’s not even as good as a small child attempting to rewrite Shakespeare with a pack of crayons. The only explanation is Bertolini must have had some sort of stroke or something since he wrote The General's Daughter. The judgement of the script is highlighted by one extraordinarily dramatic moment when Nantz is challenged by one of his men, whose brother was one of the Marines that died under his leadership. Nantz proceeds to list the name, rank and service numbers of all the men KIA under his command including Cpl. Lockett’s brother proving that he will never forget them [yes Guns I used to be able to do that before I made Major – but by then there was just too many to recall from memory] but then an instant later he says: “but that’s not important right now” – a heinous sidelining of something that is always important least we forget that we are not invincible.

Liebesman as it turns out is a competent director and is successful in delivering what he promised me so many months ago. He instructed cinematographer Lukas Ettlin to rely on shaky cam a lot and unfortunately some people whose brains can process images fast enough complain about that sort of thing but those of you with correctly functioning eye to brain processing speeds won't find any problem. One of the most sought-after and prolific composers in the movie, TV and Video Game industry Brian Tyler, composed a magnificently powerful and deeply haunting score that fit this movie like a fingerless glove leaving room for the the incredible scoundscape which made more use of DTS then any other movie I've seen this year.

Final Verdict: This is not Independence Day 2, it cannot be universally liked and will not gross $800m. It's not grotesquely violent, yet is not suitable for children. It is an war movie in the vein of Black Hawk Down, Saving Private Ryan and The Hurt Locker. It's niche is in it's realism and factual portrayal of Marines in urban combat against a fictional enemy and it will appeal to both those who seek that out as well as "the video-game crowd." Only cowards will miss this one.
Colonel Creedon Rating: *****
The Colonel would like to take the opportunity to categorically deny at this point that UNETIDA provided funding for this movie as anti- Extra Terrestrial propaganda or as a public information service to give people prior warning that the events in this movie are about to happen.