"Battleship" (2012)

  My Grade

B-

 **SPOILER ALERT for the whole review**
I'm hearing a lot of griping about this movie. People are saying that it's essentially Transformers in the water. It's a solid argument I won't lie. It could have easily been called AquaFormers or something along those lines. But alas, this is NOT a Transformers movie. Thank God. Yes there are certainly similarities. Alien life forms come down our way and want to murder us all. Or do they? Battleship never actually addresses the reasoning for this alien invasion. In fact, in the movie, the humans technically fire first, creating an all out war. The aliens never speak in the film therefore we never find out their motives. What we do know though, is that they have landed several of their ships in the Hawaiian waters where there is a big Naval competition going on. Great timing huh? We know they are attempting to communicate with their home turf up in space using satellites and beacons that the human's created to attempt to contact the aliens to begin with. And now the remaining few Naval officers have to stop this from happening. Which is tough, because the aliens have thrown a giant force field up blocking in 3 of the Navy's ships, boats, whatever you want to call them and have blocked out the rest of the fleet. Two of three ships are destroyed so it's left to just the one led by pretty boy Taylor Kitcsh (TV's Friday Night Lights, John Carter) who basically JUST joined the Navy. Go figure.

So what we have here is the same setup we pretty much always get in these big budget end of the world alien invasion movies. The most unlikely of heroes will rise from the ashes where everyone expects them to fail but end of saving the day. Listen folks, if you didn't expect the lead character to save everyone and be rewarded for it in the end, then you are crazy...or you don't see a lot of movies. You know the formula of the film, you know exactly what's going to happen. With movies like this, it completely takes away any tension. Battleship also offers little story, but in my opinion that's a good thing. Transformers 2 and 3 tried to pack in to big of a story and it fell flat on it's face. Battleship at least knows it's a mindless action movie so every ounce of plot is given to us in the first (and awful) first 20 minutes of the movie. The final 2 hours is what you are here for. The action. The shit blowing up. The aliens getting wiped out. The human debris, you know...the works.

And with that, Battleship truly delivers. When you take away the need to think in a movie it becomes fun. This movie requires you to remove that thinking cap and just enjoy what's happening. The action in this movie was done surprisingly well. A movie like this always runs the serious risk of over doing it, and going way over the top. Battleship never falls victim to this, at least I didn't think so. All the action scenes were necessary to further the movie along. There was no excess of crap. The movie pulled itself back and toned down when it needed to. It continually set us up for the next big explosion. And when the action happened, it was bad ass. I was so completely entertained. The aliens didn't talk (like the Transformers do) so there was no stupid exchanges between them and the humans. It was just shoot and kill and that's it. The visual effects in all the battle scenes were awesome! When we saw the aliens faces and hands though, I thought they looked a little to video gamey (they looked like something out of Halo or Mass Effect or something). But eh, we barely saw them that much so it wasn't a big deal.

The movie had it's fare share of totally cheesy moments, mainly anything involving Brooklyn Decker and her band of misfits on the mainland trying to stop the aliens from sending their signal. The movie could have done without most of those scenes if I'm being honest. But overall, it has likeable characters even if they are a bit hammy from time to time. You kind of root for them. While we are on the character subject, if you are looking for a movie with Liam Neeson (Taken, The Grey), the new proverbial bad ass or hunky vampire Alexander Skarsgard (True Blood) then you might want to look elsewhere. Neeson has virtually no role in the action of this movie. He is merely an extended cameo here to give certain story elements to our main character. He does nothing bad ass here. Skarsgard dies about 40 minutes in. I was surprised they didn't give Liam Neeson anything to do though. His character sits outside this force field with a huge fleet at his command but they attempt nothing. Yes, I know the force field kills on impact...but they didn't even fire a shit load of missles and bullets at the thing...could have made for a fun scene and would have given Neeson SOMETHING cool to do. Guess not.

Anyway, Battleship is not a good movie, quality wise. You can't expect it to be. It won't be winning any awards, nor is that the intention of a movie like this. But this movie is a seriously fun, entertaining thrill ride. It's chock full of excitement and plenty of solid action to go around. It has an engaging lead actor in Kitsch who does really well in carrying the film. It has a lot of great elements and is a worthy film to lose some brain cells to for a little over 2 hours. You won't be made fun of for seeing it...I don't think. I'm going to be crucified by the comic book nerds for saying this...but I kind of found this movie to be more fun than "The Avengers". Uh oh...I'm a dead man.

Oh and are you wondering if this has ANYTHING to do with the board game it's based off of? Um..no not really. There is one cool scene though where the pay homage to the game. Where they are shooting blind because their radar is down so they are using a grid system and firing almost blindly into the ocean to hit their target. Kind of like then game huh?