Traffic remains the major problem.By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time," "Cinema Classics," and "On the Marquee"
Wendy Murphy: "Oh, Honey, ever since you were a little baby, I knew... you would save the world from an alien invasion." Monsters vs. Aliens (2009)
It's the first time I have witnessed a vehicle going 6 miles on LA's Expressway 10 in less than 2 hours. Of course, it's in a Humvee that crushes stopped cars, but then this is sci-fi and the movie is Battle: Los Angeles, a fusion of Terminator, Transformer, and Blackhawk Down in the video-game mode where the enemy is just dense enough to be in your line of sight most of the time.
Aliens are invading earth, it seems, for its resources, most notably its water supply. Aaron Eckhart is SSgt. Michael Nantz of a new Marine platoon fighting aliens, who for some inexplicable reason want LA, which is the last of earth's great cities to fall. Nantz gets a chance to prove he's not the coward legend has him to be for losing men in a previous conflict, and the rest of his platoon, diverse for sure, get too-brief moments to show their humanity. It's all pretty standard stuff for war and sci-fi.
The action is relentless, mostly guns and grenades deployed around corners and inside buildings as in Blackhawk Down. The alien warriors have a Transformer look: awkward Erector-Set bodies vulnerable despite their menacing look. Their mother ship is a hodgepodge of sharp angles and gangly protrusions, more like the work of a mad inventor than the ship that brought them from multiple light years away.
Although it may seem to be boilerplate sci-fi, it does suggest our own rapacious activities with underdeveloped, resource-rich emerging nations and our fear of home-grown aliens. But I'm stretching it?Battle: Los Angeles is for geeks and video fanatics.
Lamentably, even after the attack, which destroys most cars in the city, the freeways are still clogged.
John DeSando co-hosts WCBE 90.5's It's Movie Time, Cinema Classics, and On the Marquee, which can be heard streaming at http://publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/ppr/index.shtml and on demand at http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/arts.artsmain Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.RR.com