The good folks at NASA, having nothing better to do since their budget was decimated by Congress and the Space Shuttle fleet retired, decide to send a friendly "how do you do" signal to what they determine is a planet far out in space capable of sustaining life. 5 years later they get a response in the form of an alien armada hell bent on destruction. As it happens the bulk of the alien force lands within spitting distance of a slew of naval ships conducting war games in the Pacific.
On board one of these ships is a rebel without a cause named Alex Hopper, dragged into the navy by his militaristic brother in an effort to straighten him out. The aliens set up a magnetic field around a portion of the battle group and set about to decimate it. They nearly succeed but for the fact that their carnage has resulted in young Alex finding himself in command of the last remaining ship. Can he rise to the occasion and save mankind?
That's the basic premise of Peter Berg's "Battleship". It doesn't get any more complicated than that and that's probably a good thing. It's probably also a good thing if one doesn't enter the theater to see a movie like this expecting logic because you're not going to find it here. For instance; how is it that NASA gets a physical response to their friendly invite in a scant 5 years? Unless there has been some radical re-writing of the laws of physics that I missed the speed of light is pretty much the universal speed limit. Given that and given that the closest possible habitable planet that we currently know about is some 40 or more light years away, and given that physical beings can't travel at the speed of light, it would take centuries (at the very least) for anyone, even a highly advanced civilization, to receive our signal and then physically travel the distance back to us.
But I digress because I'm not here to simply trash this movie. You can't trash trash (can you?) and that's exactly what Battleship is, though I mean that in a good way, sort of. It's a big, loud, silly piece of Hollywood trash-ertainment that, to its credit, doesn't pretend to be anything else. It should be noted too that it bears no relationship to the boring board game that lent it its name. Oh sure there's the alien ordnance that's hilariously shaped like those little pegs you stick into the board while playing the game and there's a (way too long) sequence about 2/3 of the way through where a pathetic contrivance results in everyone staring at an electronic grid with battleships on it while the principals call out co-ordinates in an attempt to 'sink' their enemy, but that's it. And those elements are so over the top as to be almost self parody.
Battleship is strictly here to feed the shark in all of us that wants to see blood in the water and to that end its a fairly successful piece of work. It's not science fiction, it's not even particularly good fiction as there's nothing in the screenplay that isn't taken from some other source. From the robotic 'balls of death' that could have come straight out of "Transformers" to the "Iron Man" suits the aliens wear to the whole "ne'er-do-well finds himself when the chips are down" theme and the hackneyed love story Battleship is an amalgam of pop culture cliches wrapped in a thick, warm blanket of professionally done CGI. It's better than Transformers II or III and that's basically because the script, as mentioned above, was kept simple. My one beef was they way they handled the aliens. All we discover about them is that they're here, they resemble humans and they're bad. I found myself wondering why they are so pissed off. (Maybe it's because they've been picking up our trashy tv shows for several decades and decided enough was enough when they learned Britney Spears is going to be a judge on next season's X-factor.)
While I'd rather watch a film with a simple, comprehensible storyline any day over one that throws narrative threads around herky-jerky in an attempt to seem like art there's a downside to making things too simple or cliched (as is the case here) and that is that the major players don't have much to do except stand around looking alternately shocked and resolved. That's not the actor's fault though. They pretty much do what they've been paid to do: Liam Neeson appears for a few minutes at the beginning and end and says some words. Taylor Kitsch as Alex Hopper remembers not to look at the camera, Brooklyn Decker is unappealing enough to be a convincing "girl next door" and the luscious Rhianna is, well, she's in the movie.
The bottom line is I didn't go into "Battleship" with any expectations and as a result found myself fairly amused (once the first half hour passed into merciful oblivion). It does what it does pretty well though what it does is neither important or ground breaking or, for that matter, even very interesting. I didn't leave the theater wanting to demand a refund but I doubt I'll be back for a second look any time soon.
Very nice review!
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