Review: Battle: Los Angeles

Grade:B-

Upsides: Aaron Eckhart’s alternately subdued and intense performance. Gritty military combat reminiscent of modern classics Black Hawk Down and Saving Private Ryan.

Downsides: Clichéd, disposable supporting characters and a bit of melodrama from the younger actors in the slower moments.

In any given alien invasion movie, there’s always vague talk of the military’s efforts to “halt” the invasion. We rarely see their efforts in these flicks outside of the irtrouncing at the beginning and the triumphant curb stomp they deliver to the once unbeatable invaders at the end.

Battle: Los Angeles earns that ending by actually showing the die-hard efforts of a—here it comes—“ragtag” platoon of Marines who “save” LA in the wake of an extraterrestrial Pearl Harbor.

As opposed to typical invasion flicks, which often serve too many masters with multiple interweaving plotlines, Battle: LA is lean and focused with some amazingly gritty set pieces. It only falters when it tries to be deeper than a men-on-a-mission/Independence Day mash-up and plunges into occasionally clichéd melodrama. In a sense, this is exactly what it says on the tin. Black Hawk Down with Aliens! As much as that sounds like a cheap pitch, it doesn’t hurt the quality of this flick one bit. This is a summer flick lost in the wrong season—or is it?—but that doesn't stop it from setting the stage for blockbuster season, two months early.

Aaron Eckhart anchors Battle: LA as haunted, exhausted Marine Staff Sargent Mike Nantz. On the day of his discharge, Nantz is forced into one final tour of duty as LA is besieged by a brutal alien force bent on decimating the population and co-opting the planet’s water (What is it with water as a MacGuffin these days? First Rango, now this.) Merged into unit of young soldiers who distrust him for a costly mistake from his past, Nantz must find a way to help the unit rescue a small group of civilians, and maybe find holes in the alien’s defenses, while struggling with an overwhelming case of survivor's guilt.

Of course Eckhart isn’t the only performer in the flick, but he is the only one the audience is going to care about. The rest of the cast, including Michael Pena and Bridget Moynahan as a pair of noble civilians trapped in the invasion zone, is practically disposable. Battle: LA opens by acquainting the audience with almost a dozen characters. Some are mildly remarkable, like virginal Pfc. Shaun Lenihan (Noel Fisher) and bitter Cpl. Jason Lockett (Corey Hardrict), but most are forgettable military clichés, ranging from the sly Jersey smartass (Gino Anthony Pesi) to the soon-to-be-wed (Ne-Yo) and the expecting father (Ramon Rodriguez). As soon as the audience meets the characters, they can begin taking bets on who survives and who doesn’t. Once Michelle Rodriguez arrives in the later half, all bets are off, thanks to her dubious survival record. Not to ignore the adequate efforts of the cast, but Eckhart’s Nantz is such a force—through big-time heroics and a subtlety in slower moments that escapes the younger actors—that none of the other characters stand a chance of stealing his spotlight. He is the perfect combination of the haunted, yet determined, hero, harkening back to the days of Eastwood and Wayne.

Not to be outdone by his performers, Director Jonathan Liebesman shows a deft hand at combining practical and computer generated effects to create a solid portrayal of decimated Los Angeles. The alien invaders have a look that falls squarely between Transformers and District 9. The grotesque insectoids are decked out in cluttered mechanical armor that makes them seem like one of the poorest and most desperate alien race to ever invade. The junky look of the aliens and their vessels creates a vulnerability that allows the aliens to avoid seeming invincibility. This vulnerability is invaluable in the combat sequences, which host some dirty and realistic, yet fairly thrilling, gunfights. By the end of Battle: LA, the amount of destruction to natives and invaders is astounding. There is a true sense of loss and defeat that is well captured by the Liebesman and his team—even if we've seen it all before—putting Battle: LA leagues above some weaker invasion films of the past decade (eyes directly on you Skyline).

On the surface, Battle: LA may seem like an obvious spin on the invasion formula, but it is a sometimes thrilling, adequately-crafted take with a compelling central performance. As one of the better invasion flicks in a long while, audiences would do well to get a front row seat to end of LA as we know it. Just don't start counting the references to other invasion flicks.

The Idea of Control (INCEPTION SPOILERS AHEAD)

Regardless of one’s interpretation of Inception’s conclusion, the final minutes of the film exemplify the film’s overarching theme of control. Christopher Nolan’s dream-twisting heist flick may have audiences battling over the “truth” of the final frame, but the undeniable thematic truth is that Inception affirms the individual, conscious desire to control the uncontrollable, be it dreams, emotions or a life spiraling into the hands of fate. Inception, for all its sleek tidiness and meticulous narrative design, is essentially about taking control of the uncontrollable by letting go. Whether Leonardo DiCaprio’s Dom is in the real world or limbo by that closing shot, he decides to abandon the dreams and emotions that ruled his life and rushes to embrace his children, effectively reclaiming control of his life. Dom’s decision punctuates the theme of taking control that reverberates through every facet of Inception, from the setup to each “stage” of its climax to the dénouement.

Long before Inception’s multi-layered climax and perplexing conclusion, Nolan examines the concept of controlling the uncontrollable through co-mingling A-stories: Dom’s struggle to control “Mal” and his team’s quest to control the dreams of Fischer. Both plotlines deftly illustrate how the characters struggle and conspire to control unbound elements of the human psyche, specifically emotions and dreams. From the opening “extraction,” Dom struggles to avoid, ignore and altogether obfuscate “Mal,” the embodiment of his guilt over the death of his wife. Dom cripples his ability to perform dream-share extractions because he cannot control the grief that disturbs his subconscious. So disturbing is this grief that it emanates in the visage of his deceased wife and constantly threatens his team’s missions. Dom’s journey in Inception is as much about returning to his family as it is gaining control over a debilitating emotional handicap, in his case a devastating amount of grief. He fights with “Mal” through the duration of the film—physically, verbally and emotionally—and it is only when he faces her and embraces the irony of control—letting go in order to gain control—does he begin to conquer his emotions and escape his own personal “limbo.” By facing his emotions as an addict does an addiction that has overrun their life—by confronting and releasing the source of the pain—Dom achieves a semblance of control over a seemingly uncontrollable adversary.

Accordingly, Dom’s team plots a meticulous strategy—one that makes use of a wealth of talents to control the heretofore uncontrollable realm of dreams—to manipulate the dreams of global energy conglomerate heir, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), and plant an idea that will prevent him from monopolizing the energy industry. Each member of Dom’s team represents an attempt to control some aspect of the dream process, from Yusuf (Dileep Rao) the Chemist, whose sedatives initiate near-endless sleep, to Ariadne (Ellen Page) the Architect, who constructs the dream world, to the Eames (Tom Hardy) the Forger, who creates weapons and identities out of thin air. The specialists all prepare clever plans to control their respective aspects during the multi-stage inception, the act of planting an idea in the mind by delving into deeper dream levels, yet they face seemingly preternatural resistance the longer they spend in Fischer’s dreamscape. In response, the dreamer, or controller, of each level must wrest control of their dream level from forces beyond their control, be they physiological or emotional. Inception’s climax bounces between dreamers on each level as they battle subconscious soldiers, anti-gravity, and errant emotional manifestations to regain control of their dream worlds. At crucial points during the climax, each dreamer regains control of their level moments before they are “kicked,” or awakened, into relinquishing control.

The concept of control also surfaces in certain concepts, characterizations and arcs. The very concept of dream-sharing, including the acts of extraction and inception, is built on the foundation of attempting to control a realm of uncontrolled thought. A victim of a dream-share extraction, Saito hires Dom to perform an inception on Fischer in an effort to both prevent Fischer from controlling an industrial monopoly and likely establish his own conglomerate. Even the target of the inception, Fischer, is seeking his deceased father’s approval to control his own life. To varying degrees, each character and concept in Inception is dedicated to echoing the theme of gaining or losing control.

By the conclusion of Inception, the idea of control is prevalent in every aspect of the story from the characterizations to concepts to the props (i.e. totems like Dom’s spinning top, which act as barometers of differences between controlled dreams and reality). When Dom abandons the top in favor of his children at the end, he becomes the embodiment of the idea of control and its inherent irony. He has become a man who has regained control, but only after struggling against, and frequently losing to, forces beyond his control, both internal and external. However, even in this moment of triumph, the irony of control—that delicate balance between losing and gaining control—lords over the scene. As Dom makes his way to his children and exits the frame, the top, which affirms Dom’s presence in reality by falling, he spun seconds earlier continues to spin until it wobbles, seemingly losing control.