Warning: SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW
I’m not generally a fan of war films or alien invasion films, but when you combine the two, somehow it all worked out. Battle: Los Angeles follows SSgt. Michael Nantz (Aaron Eckhart) and a group of Marines who are trying to save civilians from an alien invasion in Los Angeles. The characters really are the B-plot to the film, as the action scenes and invasion really are the highlights of the film. This isn’t to say that the characters aren’t interesting, but there wasn’t much “real” dialogue except for telling people where to go and when to blow things up.
The characters who aren’t named Michael Nantz don’t have much of a backstory, and I think that was a good call from the screenwriters. Too much backstory would’ve detracted from the battles as well as added on a lot more running time (as the film is already a few minutes short of 2 hours). That being said, the characters played by Michelle Rodriguez and Michael Pena were probably the strongest parts of the cast.
As Kyal pointed out when he reviewed the film in theaters, Battle: Los Angeles is pretty much Black Hawk Down with aliens. While these aliens look more like Transformers and less like E.T., the film always looked realistic and it was hard to tell where real camera shots ended and CGI took over. Unlike X-Men Origins: Wolverine and some other films that had great CGI in some places and HORRIBLE CGI in others, Battle: Los Angeles looked beautiful on Blu-ray and was very crisp and clear in detail.
