Battle Los Angeles - a review by Camilo Arenivar

This is a different kind of alien invasion movie. It is more like "Blackhawk Down" with aliens. It is, first and foremost a classic American military war movie - complete with hoo rah Marines and heavy on the camaraderie that makes up the real life service that has been captured in war movie after war movie. The twist is, the war is not Afghanistan, Iraq, Italy, Nazi Germany or Somalia - it's Los Angeles. Santa Monica, Venice and the West Side to be exact.

This is another movie that maybe leads you to believe is more sci fi alien fantasy epic than war movie. There are great lengths taken to build the background story with some of the characters that will later be used to draw at the heartstrings. There is limited success with this.

There is a lot of fighting, explosions, and all out battle. A lot of ground battle between alien forces and U.S. troops. I felt the movie could have been a little shorter. Fort the most part, the movie works as an alien based war battle film. As a sci-fi scary alien invasion movie, not as much. Dialogue and acting was not so great, special effects were. Way better than the last urban alien invasion movie, 2009's "Skyline", which was awful, but not quite as good as 2008's "Cloverfield". Let's hope Steven Spielberg's "Super 8" delivers this Summer.

Rating: 80

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