Battle: Los Angeles – Blu-ray Review

The Film:

Ever since the Roswell UFO Incident in the Summer of 1947, Americans have been obsessed with aliens and alien invasions, to which Hollywood has gladly provided for the last handful of decades. It seems like every decade has had its definitive alien/alien invasion film, but nothing recently has matched our definitive film in Independence Day. In the era of CG, which has made everything possible, these films have geared sharply away from the cerebral element of the invasion and have offered the spectacle of destruction like we’ve never seen. Sun Tzu would be proud of director Jonathan Liebesman’s Battle: Los Angeles, even though it’s the NASCAR of alien invasion movies.

Truthfully, it’s as simple as that. It’s left turns all day. Regardless, just like when we look up at ESPN’s clips of the violent left turns that give us the spectacle of some car crashes, amidst all of the war movie cliches, this Black Hawk Down-meets-ID4 just might be the be-all, end-all of CGI destruction. Running about two hours, we get about 90 minutes of pure destruction and it’s glorious. Liebesman certainly benefits from the high budget and years of CG perfection, as you get the feeling he’s made Michael Bay look like a kid blowing up toy soldiers in his sandbox. It’s empty calorie mindless fun.

There’s a scene where Michelle Rodriguez and Aaron Eckhart capture one of the aliens and try to figure out its biology so they know how to kill it. They keep digging and digging for something that resembles a heart. Ah, much like this film. Outside of some subtitles that tell us who’s who, we really don’t get much more than that for the Marines. Sure, we get some early scenes of one soldier planning his wedding, one soldier questioning himself for battle, one soldier readying to retire, but it’s all for caricature, which does little for us to get behind the thick layer of patriotism that is on display. While we as a culture in America has taken on that badge of honor ever since 9/11, it does not make for depth.

Battle: Los Angeles is what we call a critic-proof movie. You’ll see all of the bad reviews, but it’s a mindless film of non-stop warring. If it had a little more to the story and its characters, we just might have something special here. And for that, it could be easily topped, but it is the bukkake of CGI collateral damage.

The Blu-ray:

Audio/Video: Sony delivers their typically solid HD presentation. Despite the drab urban landscape of concrete and buildings, the transfer is razor sharp in its details and clarity. The DTS track is demo material. Constantly active, loud, bass heavy, it’ll give your audio system a workout.

Command Control: This is a gigantically thorough picture-in-picture, full of storyboards, behind-the-scenes footage, interviews, VFX how-to’s, and more, fully making this the go-to extra on the disc.

Aliens in L.A. looks at the design work on the creatures; Creating L.A. in LA looks at the production team’s job in making Louisiana as a stand-in for Los Angeles; Boot Camp shows what the actors went through for their roles; and Behind the Battle, Preparing for Battle, Directing the Battle, and The Freeway Battle are all on the action in the film, just broken down into different segments. All of these run about 5-10 minutes and are in HD.

The Film: Rating:

The Blu-ray: Rating: