DVD Review: Battle: Los Angeles

Aliens-take-L.A. shoot ‘em up arrives on DVD and Blu-Ray June 14.

One of the most common interpretations of science-fiction movies is that they represent, in a loosely allegorical way, the tensions and anxieties of their period. War movies, to invoke equally commonplace analysis, serve either to help soothe our anxieties about a conflict currently carrying on or to act as a catharsis for war’s aftermath and resonance. Don’t worry about such matters as subtext or meaning when watching Battle: Los Angeles, the science fiction war spectacle directed by Jonathan Liebesman (Darkness Falls.) The film is an exercise in spectacle, sp0t-welding the hoariest conventions and clichés from both genres into an uneasy alliance that only sometimes engages beyond the crash-boom level of passive interest.

Aaron Eckhart, who by now ought to be considered among Hollywood’s most versatile actors, plays Marine staff sergeant Michael Nantz, a decorated Iraq War veteran despite his waning physical prime and lurking suspicions among his fellow soldiers regarding his leadership skills. The very day he signs his retirement papers, a meteorite shower off the coast of nearby Los Angeles turns into a siege by a terrifying extraterrestrial force. The aliens move swiftly and decisively, devastating Santa Monica and heading inland towards downtown Los Angeles. Nantz, against his protestations, must lead a platoon to a forward operating base to assist in the city’s defense.

The Marines he leads fit vaguely defined and immediately recognizable character types: the officer’s training school family man on his first mission; the virgin yokel full of “aw, shucks” naiveté; the easygoing soldier planning his wedding and his smartass buddy. The group is assigned to answer a distress call emanating from a police station inside the city, but must complete the mission before an Air Force bomber squadron launches a full counter-attack against the ground-based alien hostiles.

Nantz and his met set off towards the police station, encountering several ambushes along their route. To the credit of the movie’s realism, the enemy soldiers are not unrealistically hard to kill or malevolent in their strategy. Like the Marines, their movements are orderly, disciplined, and goal-oriented. The Marines, largely outgunned (the aliens shoot giant tracer-fire projectiles) and outmaneuvered, fight on despite dwindling numbers and a growing sense of panic. A rendezvous with an Army group allows them to add an Air Force intelligence analyst (Michelle Rodriguez) who provides important expository details for the remainder of the plot.

Once at the police station they find the survivors: a kindly local resident (Michael Pena) and his son; a veterinarian (Bridget Moynahan) and her cherubic niece. The squad captures an alien soldier, finding its weak spot (“Aim to the right of where its heart should be!”) by stabbing it repeatedly. As the aliens storm the police station the squad and their evacuees escape by hot-wiring a city bus, leading to a firefight atop a freeway overpass that becomes the film’s most exciting set piece.

Borrowing from the traditions of both its genres, the film has a rigidly episodic structure, with characterization and character interaction acting as the paste that holds the different fight scenes together. Screenwriter Christopher Bertolini (The General’s Daughter) builds the action sequences one atop another, so that the tension builds for the characters even if our concern for them does not. Many of the Marines die, including several wounded during a helicopter crash that anyone who saw last year’s undervalued The Losers will see coming well in advance.

The film’s last third, maybe more than any other action movie of recent years, makes for a spectacular (if probably wholly inaccurate) recruitment pitch for the Marine Corps itself. Given the opportunity to withdraw to safety behind friendly lines, Nantz and his men resolve to find and destroy the alien command center buried deep within the city’s sewer system. It’s explained halfway through the story, via televised exposition, that the aliens feed themselves and fuel their war machine with water. Earth has the most liquid water in our solar system, making us a target. As movie logic goes that’s not bad, and good enough for the purposes here.

The climactic firefight, in which the Marines employ their hard-won tactical knowledge while calling in a missile strike against the base, makes for the most suspenseful part of the story; it’s also the part with the most convincing special effects. For whatever griping about clichés that are readily apparent elsewhere, that the script uses the missile strike scenario in favor of more hackneyed story devices – Nantz or one of the others taking a bag of explosives on a suicide run, someone makes a last-second, lucky shot with a rocket launcher, et cetera – helps elevate the entire film away from the mire of formula that seems always at the feet of each new plot development.

Eckhart gives Nantz more dimension than the character as written probably deserves, shading him with determination, regret, and at times a self-destruct impulse that the script woefully punctuates with creaky dialogue like “that’s some real John Wayne shit, man!” Pena, playing an everyman who’s not as helpless as the Marines expect, overachieves in his stock part. As for the two women, Moynahan has seldom had much to do in her previous roles except look handsome; a capable character actress nevertheless, here she manages to be appealing and convincing even when covered in with an inch-thick layer of dust. Rodriguez, though still too quick to deploy the scowl that bogged down so much of Lost‘s second season, has a conviction here that was seldom seen in that series.

Finally, concept artist Paul Gerrard deserves notice for his work designing the alien military, giving their machines and weapons both a unified look but also an unusual complexity. The invaders have their own military organization and internal logic, with officers appearing different from foot soldiers and machinery bearing a distinct – if creepy – functionality. The aliens themselves are exotic looking without seeming overly elaborate or egregiously unsettling. Even their body parts show a kind of thoughtful design. If only the rest of the film, especially its characterization, demonstrated that much consideration.

- Michael Kabel

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Review: Battle: Los Angeles

Aaron Eckhart leads a platoon of stock characters into an epic clash of genre tropes.

One of the most common interpretations of science-fiction movies is that they represent, in a loosely allegorical way, the tensions and anxieties of their period. War movies, to invoke equally commonplace analysis, serve either to help soothe our anxieties about a conflict currently carrying on or to act as a catharsis for war’s aftermath and resonance. Don’t worry about such matters as subtext or meaning if you go see Battle: Los Angeles, the science fiction war spectacle directed by Jonathan Liebesman (Darkness Falls.) The film is an exercise in spectacle, sp0t-welding the hoariest conventions and clichés from both genres into an uneasy alliance that only sometimes engages beyond the crash-boom level of passive interest.

Aaron Eckhart, who by now ought to be considered among Hollywood’s most versatile actors, plays Marine staff sergeant Michael Nantz, a decorated Iraq War veteran despite his waning physical prime and lurking suspicions among his fellow soldiers regarding his leadership skills. The very day Nantz signs his retirement papers, a meteorite shower off the coast of nearby Los Angeles turns into a siege by a terrifying extraterrestrial force. The aliens move swiftly and decisively, devastating Santa Monica and heading inland towards downtown. Nantz, against his protestations, must lead a platoon to a forward operating base to assist in the city’s defense.

The Marines he leads fit vaguely defined and immediately recognizable character types: the officer’s training school family man on his first mission; the virgin yokel full of aw, shucks naiveté; the easygoing soldier planning his wedding and his smartass buddy. The group is assigned to answer a distress call emanating from a police station inside the city, but must complete the mission before an Air Force bomber squadron launches a full counter-attack against the ground-based alien hostiles.

Nantz and his met set off towards the police station, encountering several ambushes along their route. To the credit of the movie’s realism, the enemy soldiers are not unrealistically hard to kill or malevolent in their strategy. Like the Marines, their movements are orderly, disciplined, and goal-oriented. The Marines, largely outgunned (the aliens shoot giant tracer-fire projectiles) and outmaneuvered, fight on despite dwindling numbers and a growing sense of panic. A rendezvous with an Army group allows them to add an Air Force intelligence analyst (Michelle Rodriguez) who provides important expository details for the remainder of the plot.

Once at the police station they find the survivors: a kindly local resident (Michael Pena) and his son; a veterinarian (Bridget Moynahan) and her cherubic niece. The squad captures an alien soldier, finding its weak spot (“Aim to the right of where its heart should be!”) by stabbing it repeatedly. As the aliens storm the police station the squad and their evacuees escape by hot-wiring a city bus, leading to a firefight atop a freeway overpass that becomes the film’s most exciting set piece.

Borrowing from the traditions of both its genres, the film has a rigidly episodic structure, with characterization and character interaction acting as the paste that holds the different fight scenes together. Screenwriter Christopher Bertolini (The General’s Daughter) builds the action sequences one atop another, so that the tension builds for the characters even if our concern for them does not. Many of the Marines die, including several wounded during a helicopter crash that anyone who saw last year’s undervalued The Losers will see coming well in advance.

The film’s last third, maybe more than any other action movie of recent years, makes for a spectacular (if probably wholly inaccurate) recruitment pitch for the Marine Corps itself. Given the opportunity to withdraw to safety behind friendly lines, Nantz and his men resolve to find and destroy the alien command center buried deep within the city’s sewer system. It’s explained halfway through the story, via televised exposition, that the aliens feed themselves and fuel their war machine with water. Earth has the most liquid water in our solar system, making us a target. As movie logic goes, that’s not bad.

The climactic firefight, in which the Marines employ their hard-won tactical knowledge while calling in a missile strike against the base, makes for the most suspenseful part of the story; it’s also the part with the most convincing special effects. For whatever griping about clichés that are readily apparent elsewhere, that the script uses the missile strike scenario in favor of more hackneyed story devices – Nantz or one of the others taking a bag of explosives on a suicide run, someone makes a last-second, lucky shot with a rocket launcher, et cetera -  helps elevate the entire film away from the mire of formula that seems always at the feet of each new plot development. 

As for the performances, Eckhart gives Nantz more dimension than the character as written probably deserves, shading him with determination, regret, and at times a self-destruct impulse that fuels one of the better action pieces. (Until it’s punctuated with creaky dialogue like “that’s some real John Wayne shit, man!”) Pena, playing an everyman who’s not as helpless as the Marines expect, overachieves in his stock part. As for the two women, Moynahan has seldom had much to do in her previous roles except look handsome; a capable character actress nevertheless, here she manages to be appealing and convincing even when covered in with an inch-thick layer of dust. Rodriguez, though still too quick to deploy the scowl that bogged down so much of Lost‘s second season, has a conviction here that was seldom seen in that series.

Finally, concept artist Paul Gerrard deserves notice for his work designing the alien military, giving their machines and weapons both a unified look but also an unusual complexity. The invaders have their own military organization and internal logic, with officers appearing different from foot soldiers and machinery bearing a distinct – if creepy – functionality. The aliens themselves are exotic looking without seeming overly elaborate or egregiously unsettling. Even their body parts show a kind of thoughtful design. If only the rest of the film, especially its characterization, demonstrated that much consideration.

- Michael Kabel

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DVD Review: Observe And Report

Seth Rogen’s walk on the dark side of comedy arrives on DVD and Blu-Ray this week.

In the past we’ve criticized Seth Rogen for repeatedly giving the same performance of the same character with little variation. But in Observe and Report, out this week on DVD and Blu-Ray, he finally takes a big risk by playing Ronnie Barnhardt, a bipolar and dangerously unstable shopping mall security guard. Clearly intended to be a hilariously uncomfortable misfit in the vein of Robert DeNiro’s Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy, Rogen never quite manages to create a complete character, largely due to the fractured script and direction of writer/director Jody Hill.

The intensely dark comedy follows Ronnie the would-be alpha dog as he tries to apprehend two criminals terrorizing the local mall: a compulsive flasher (referred to merely as “the Pervert”), and a seemingly invisible thief. His efforts are frustrated, however, when police Detective Harris (Ray Liotta) arrives and promptly puts the moves on Brandi (Anna Faris), the cosmetics saleswoman whom Ronnie obsesses over. Ronnie earnestly tries to prove his mettle to the vapid Brandi, but a series of disappointments and betrayals makes him a threat to everyone around him. 

Oddly, the humor shines brightest in the film’s darkest moments, such as a squirm-inducing psychological evaluation as well as anything involving Ronnie’s degenerate mother (Celia Weston). But the gags miss more often than not, and Hill relies too heavily on gratuitous shock value. (He seems particularly intent on breaking records for the most droppings of the f-bomb and for the longest unedited tracking shot of male genitalia.) For that matter, whole sequences feel uninspired and derivative, borrowing liberally from braver films including Office Space and Borat! 

Most distracting of all is Hill’s over-reliance on musical montages: it’s a crutch he can’t seem to shake when the story – his own story, at that - calls for character development. The result is a barrage of repetitive, tedious vignettes that provide the cheapest of laughs in the spaces between the more unsettling moments.

Given such uncertainty, it’s possibly no surprise that his treatment of violence borders on schizophrenic. Though not as irresponsible as the gunplay of Pineapple Express (also starring Rogen and frequent Hill collaborator Danny McBride), the violence here is alternately grotesque and laughably absurd. In a film that seems at least intrigued by the ugliness of human aggression, it’s disconcerting that Hill glosses over the consequences of violence. It’s as if he wants to throw the issue into the spotlight without disturbing anyone too badly – in other words, to play it safe. That might be excusable for a brainless comedy, but such timidity diminishes the toll that Ronnie’s aggression takes on his psyche and undercuts the integrity of the film as a whole.

It’s also surprising how the female characters leave the most lasting impressions. Weston in particular steals her scenes: her character’s half-hearted desire to play caretaker is constantly thwarted by her own brutal and ambivalent honesty. Faris, as the object of Ronnie’s obsession, has perfected the grating, toxic airhead that she’s previously dabbled with in Lost in Translation and Just Friends. Collette Wilson ably conveys some much needed purity as Brandi’s good-girl rival for Ronnie’s affection.

By way of contrast, Michael Peña is both disappointing and misused as Ronnie’s best friend and “partner in crime” Dennis. Sporting a horrible jheri curl wig and speaking with a cartoonishly effeminate lisp, Peña’s character amounts to little more than a walking sight gag. Considering Peña’s previous gut-wrenching turns in Crash and The Lucky Ones, I  expected more than an indefinable caricature that unnerves without managing to amuse. 

Ultimately, however, the film is a Seth Rogen vehicle, and his perennially affable presence limits the degree of menace that the script demands.  To his credit, anyone would be endearing – even noble – when compared to the reprobates surrounding him. Yet Rogen’s innate likeability translates into vulnerability in his scenes with Weston and Wilson, and the tenderness of these scenes help make the pat, “all is forgiven” Hollywood ending bearable. And to be completely fair, even veteran actors have failed to find the proper balance between humor and danger – just look at Robin Williams’ dreadful Toys or Death to Smoochy, or Jim Carrey’s little-loved The Cable Guy.

Its many flaws aside, Observe and Report manages to be an entertaining ninety minutes, and it proves that there’s more to Rogen than just his stoned slacker shtick. He could probably create a truly compelling walk on the dark side, if he could find a director willing to take him all the way.

- Stephen Kabel

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(Note: An earlier version of this review originally appeared for the film’s theatrical release.)

Review: Observe and Report

Seth Rogen’s diversion through the dark side of comedy can’t get out of its own way.

In the past we’ve criticized Seth Rogen for repeatedly giving the same performance of the same character with little variation. But in his new film Observe and Report, he finally takes a big risk by playing Ronnie Barnhardt, a bipolar and dangerously unstable shopping mall security guard. Clearly intended to be a hilariously uncomfortable misfit in the vein of Robert DeNiro’s Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy, Rogen never quite manages to create a complete character, largely due to the fractured script and direction of writer/director Jody Hill.

The intensely dark comedy follows Ronnie the would-be alpha dog as he tries to apprehend two criminals terrorizing the local mall: a compulsive flasher (referred to merely as “the Pervert”), and a seemingly invisible thief. His efforts are frustrated, though, when police Detective Harris (Ray Liotta) arrives and promptly puts the moves on Brandi (Anna Faris), the cosmetics saleswoman whom Ronnie obsesses over. Ronnie earnestly tries to prove his mettle, but a series of disappointments and betrayals makes him a threat to everyone around him. 

Oddly, the humor shines brightest in the film’s darkest moments, such as a squirm-inducing psychological evaluation and anything involving Ronnie’s degenerate mother (Celia Weston). But the gags miss more often than not, and Hill relies too heavily on gratuitous shock value. (He seems particularly intent on breaking records for the most droppings of the f-bomb and for the longest unedited tracking shot of male genitalia.) For that matter, whole sequences feel uninspired and derivative, especially from Office Space and Borat! 

Most distracting of all is Hill’s over-reliance on musical montages: it’s a crutch he can’t seem to shake when the story – his own story, at that - calls for character development. The end result is a barrage of repetitive, tedious vignettes that provide the cheapest of laughs in the spaces between the more unsettling moments.

So it’s possibly no surprise that his treatment of violence borders on schizophrenic. Though not as irresponsible as the gunplay of Pineapple Express (also starring Rogen and frequent Hill collaborator Danny McBride), the violence here is alternately grotesque and laughably absurd. In a film that seems at least intrigued by the ugliness of human aggression, it’s disconcerting that Hill glosses over the consequences of violence. It’s as if he wants to throw the issue into the spotlight without disturbing anyone too badly – in other words, to play it safe. That might be excusable for a brainless comedy, but such timidity diminishes the toll that Ronnie’s aggression takes on his psyche and undercuts the integrity of the film as a whole.

It’s also surprising how the female characters leave the most lasting impressions. Weston in particular steals her scenes: her character’s halfhearted desire to play caretaker is constantly thwarted by her own brutal and ambivalent honesty. Faris, as the object of Ronnie’s obsession, has perfected the grating, toxic airhead that she’s previously dabbled with in Lost in Translation and Just Friends. Collette Wilson ably conveys some much needed purity as Brandi’s good-girl rival for Ronnie’s affection.

By way of contrast, Michael Peña is both disappointing and misused as Ronnie’s best friend and “partner in crime” Dennis. Sporting a horrible jheri curl wig and speaking with a cartoonishly effeminate lisp, Peña’s character amounts to little more than a walking sight gag. Considering Peña’s previous gut-wrenching turns in Crash and The Lucky Ones, I  expected more than an indefinable caricature that unnerves without managing to amuse. 

Ultimately, however, the film is a Seth Rogen vehicle, and his perennially affable presence limits the degree of menace that the script demands.  To his credit, anyone would be endearing – even noble – when compared to the reprobates surrounding him. Yet Rogen’s innate likeability translates into vulnerability in his scenes with Weston and Wilson, and the tenderness of these scenes help make the pat, “all is forgiven” Hollywood ending bearable. And to be completely fair, even veteran actors have failed to find the proper balance between humor and danger – just look at Robin Williams’ dreadful Toys or Death to Smoochy, or Jim Carrey’s little-loved The Cable Guy.

Its many flaws aside, Observe and Report manages to be an entertaining ninety minutes, and it proves that there’s more to Rogen than just his slacker stoner shtick. His next feature, Judd Apatow’s Adam Sandler vehicle Funny People,  promises a return to form. That’s a shame, because Rogen could probably create a truly compelling walk on the dark side – if he could find a director willing to take him all the way.

- Stephen Kabel
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