Battle Los Angeles - 2011

I think this is the right title. Very good war movie, the action scenes were well done. Sure, the war was against aliens, so it’s more a sci-fi movie, actually. Aaron Eckhart plays the hero-sergeant, doing a good job. One thing I hated was when the soldiers were giving the sergeant bad looks because he had lost a couple of men in some other battle, as if it was his fault, as if for him to come back alive was a crime, as if no commander ever lost any soldiers, as if those men were not Marines by their own choice, as if he could have done something, as if for soldiers to die was unheard of. I was very annoyed at that soldier complaining “are we expendable for you?” or something like that. Now, I understand that he was hurting because his brother was one of the men who died, and that he’s exhausted for the terrible situation they’re in, but that whining is not what I expected from a Marine, specially against his commander, who by now has helped quite a lot in the battle. 

Obviously this movie does not betray the usual aliens-movie-plot: The aliens look invincible at first, then begin to fall down like fruits against our heroes; there is of course a sort of mother-ship, or central command, that controls all the flying drones. Aliens always have something like that, although one thing is not clear to me this time: the one they destroyed controlled the drones in the whole Earth or just those in L.A.? I suppose the aliens attacked the whole planet, since it’s called ‘World invasion’, and yet our heroes find it right in front of them.

This things aside, I think it’s a good movie. It starts very quiet, with tv-news talking of some meteors about to impact on Earth, only thing is, once arrived they slow down, land, and aliens come out and shoot and bomb everything they see. They really make a big mess, a very noisy and burning one. Our group of Marines arrives at their mission destination and find only three children and two people to save. They call for an helicopter to take them out of there, it comes and only takes wounded soldiers. The sergeant shout: wait, take the children, but they’re all : there isn’t enough space, we must go, only to be shot down and destroyed. Naturally the Marines are shaken, “they’re all dead”, they weren’t expecting a war and they weren’t prepared for the aliens having such power in the air. I couldn’t believe the scene where the civilian father has his child sit in front of the tv while the news speak of the war and people shot dead, and the man only barely covered the kid’s eyes, not worried that he’s listening too. Sure, this is a hard time and the kid is living it, still tv news don’t help at all, on the contrary! 

The group finds an alien almost dead and bring him in to open him up and take a good look at how it can be killed. Our sergeant finds out and orders his people to shoot “to the right of where the heart would be”. Nice and easy, isn’t it?  :-/   From now on it’s almost one shoot-one kill. Where the hell where they aiming before??

He also discovers that the aliens are tracking their radio signal, so he switches one on and places it at a gas station, so he manages to blow off a big, shooting and flying drone. This is where he finds out about drones. When he comes back to the others he’s all shacking, poor thing. I liked this scene a lot, well done and with a touch of humanity that was even more heroic. 

Soon afterwards the lieutenant in command until now is badly injured, and says: go get them out of here sergeant. Our hero wouldn’t want to leave him, ‘not again’, but he has to. The lieutenant dies an honorable death every Klingon would be proud of. He blows himself up killing many aliens. The civilian man dies saving/helping the soldier helping his child. Finally a new helicopter comes to take them to safety, but our soldiers follow the sergeant down. “Marines don’t quit” so they go looking for the central control, to stop the drones. They destroy it, and are then welcomed by the rest of the army offering them to rest and eat , but “Marines don’t quit” so again our iron-sergeant and his soldiers pack all the weapons they can and go back into battle to “let’s get Los Angeles back”. The end. 

Funny how, if you think about it, this is not at all the end of the war. They simply won a battle, but the invasion is not stopped. Not yet, at least. I guess they’ll pass their information around to all the places that have been attacked, so Earth will be able to better defend itself.

In Italy : world invasion