MYST post #7: Battle Los Angeles

I watched Battle Los Angeles due to boredom and the fact that this movie was downloaded on my friends computer. As we were driving to southern Illinois, he pulled it up, which I hadn't seen in a few years. I barely remember the plot but all I remember that the action and digital effects were great. Looking at movie reviews on this movie really made me question watching it, and thus made me be very critical of watching it. It received a 35% on Rotten Tomatoes by the way... Ok so lets get into the plot and my critical review of the movie.

First, Battle Los Angeles to have a lot of plots holes and a lot of missing parts that should not have been missed. The movie starts as many other alien invasion movies such as Independence Day, because they both started happy go lucky before everything went crazy. Next a sergeant from another city, is introduced to help lead another platoon in practice missions. One of the members of the platoon had taken his presence to be hard to stand as the sergeant's leadership had killed his brother. This conflict was introduced to make more tension against one another in the movie. After some time, new casts on the television showed extra terrestrial beings approaching major cities. Of course, the characters had to seem that they did not know what was coming, but many hints were preparing the soldiers for the invasion of aliens. Once many deaths/chaos ensued, all platoons, including the sergeant's, were ordered to fight against the aliens. His platoon was ordered to find a bunch of civilians a few miles away. Unfortunately throughout the story many of the soldiers die and throughout the story, you grow more fond of the sergeant. As the platoon soon finds out, it is very difficult to kill the extra terrestrials, and the only way to kill them is shooting them in what seems to be their form of the heart. Also, all of the aliens are controlled by one, huge, mothership. This seems re-done... Oh wait. It is. Independence Day which was made 15 years prior to Battle Los Angeles. In both movies, if you destroy the mothership, you destroy all of the aliens. In the end though, a member of the platoon does take down the entire ship and humans, once again, regain power of the world. How original..
One scene that I want to take a deeper look at was when the platoon was on a helicopter, on their way to safety, and the sergeant volunteer's to try and kill the mothership. At first, none of the other members seem to want to slide down that rope, which seemed to be a death wish to stay back, but in the end, his entire platoon followed him down the rope to try and help save mankind. This was a big turning point in the relationship between the sergeant and it's members. Also it was a very spiritual and patriotic move that all of the platoon would literally risk their lives for their country.
The movie had very good visual effects, because of course they cannot emulate an alien without good digital help. They workers did a great job on this. Also, I liked the "far off" graphics of the mothership, crashing helicopters, and flying missiles. As always, I was trying to note any audio that would help the plot develop/increase tension; I did not notice any of this and I feel that the movie lacked a special part that could have increased my liking towards it. Finally, I feel that this movie is much too predictable and acting is, mediocre, at best. You're friend just died from an unknown alien, please react more than just staring at the body.
Overall, all this movie did for me was passed time on my 5 hour car ride. I did not really like the ending of the movie, which was so predictable. One thing I did like about the movie was the patriotism held throughout the entire movie, but that is barely it. I would only recommend this movie if you have not seen Independence Day, which did receive a much better score on Rotten Tomatoes than this. I give this movie 2.5/5 stars