“This is a military invasion” announces one character in the movie, and pretty much describes the entire movie. It even spells it out for you in the movie’s title itself. “World Invasion, Battle: Los Angeles” is pure combat, war action, and in this movie, the alien sci-fi aspect actually takes a secondary description.
What seems at first like a meteor shower, turns out as an entry of alien armies on a blitzkrieg attack on numerous parts of planet Earth. The movie focuses on Los Angeles, California where an alien battalion has began decimating the population. We, the audience, follow a military platoon dispatched to locate surviving civilians, and battle the attacking aliens.
This is all-gritty combat movie, as it is all told from the soldier’s perspective; no scientists, no overheroic civilians, and we don’t even get to see the enemy point of view. The movie wastes no time in lingering too much on what these aliens are and why they are trying to wipe out all humans. The movie just tells you flat out the details in a couple of seconds, and then goes back to the action. It reminds me of Vietnam War movies where the focus is generally on the protagonist soldiers, their interactions with one another, and there’s not much of a focus on what the enemy looks like or what the enemy motivation really is. It’s very much war drama – with aliens.
There is a specific focus on the military unit. We follow them throughout the movie. Through their moments of suspense, drama, and action, we are there with them. And because of this, we get to share the character’s fears and paranoia of what is out there, and the anticipation of getting to shelter and safety as soon as possible, as well as the fears and questions of how this violent menace can be stopped.
The script of the movie is its weak point, with lines that are dull and traditional. It’s a good thing Aaron Eckhart was able to deliver those badly-written lines. His impressive acting boiled down the cheesiness of the script. The rest of the cast were good enough to be satisfactory. But then again, this is a movie that is not meant to rely too much on the script, but more on the emotions of the characters and what happens to them visually.
The character development of the story lasted for some very few scenes, and felt like it did not need to elaborate on their personalities too much. The film accomplishes a decent character development for its handful of main cast in a mere couple of minutes. Even Michelle Rodriguez’s character which was introduced late, had her fair amount of time with character development.
The director Jonathan Liebesman employs a “shaky camera” documentary-looking style that remind you of Paul Greengrass’ Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Ultimatum, Neill Blomkamp’s District 9, and actual marine footages during the Iraq war. This emulates the grit and the realism of a real world being menaced by an alien attack, and how the military would actually counter-act to this menace. Just like the other films of similar styles, the use of news reports to view the attacks simulate the shock, awe, and horror of an actual alien attack. As I was watching many of the scenes on this movie, I could not help but be reminded of footages of the US invasion of Iraq. There are elements of the story that seem to allude to that, but it is not crow-barred in to be annoying, and becomes nothing more than a coincidental similarity.
The specific details on the aliens, as to the alien creature designs, and its vehicles and weapons, are not being spotlighted too much. Although you do get to see the aliens and its vehicles, you really don’t get to see every bit of detail of what the aliens look like. Mainly because the design of the aliens does look out-of-this world, and you can’t easily compare its appearance to some existing animal. We don’t get to see the aliens actually spell out what their motivations are, yet the story does get to address that. Unlike many alien invasion movies, these are not all-too invulnerable aliens; we don’t get to waste time trying to figure out how to kill an alien; rather, it boils down to combat sensibilities, with the question: how do you win the battle?
For me, this is the first big explosive movie of 2011. High points on visual impact and tense military combat action. A spectacular movie to check out. I give it a two thumbs up!
Written by Reymundo Salao
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