Battle: Los Angeles

To be honest, there's not a whole lot to say about Battle: Los Angeles. Take pretty much every alien invasion film you can think of, mix up all the most clichéd plot elements, throw in a handful of stereotypical US marines and a hefty dose of shakey-cam CGI explosions, and you will have a fairly good impression of what the film is like.

It's not terrible; on the other hand it's not exactly good either. There is very little in the way of plot (choosing to focus solely on one squad of marines as they try to escape the city is not a wise choice), and the characters are so poorly defined that I generally found it difficult to tell them all apart, especially in the chaotic action scenes. At one point almost half the cast gets killed in an explosion and I couldn't even work out who had died. There's also a few groan-inducing moments of poor dialogue, but ultimately the worst offender is the frankly awful direction by Jonathan Liebesman - the action is generally incoherent and actually quite dull. That's quite the achievement when there are that many things blowing up...

VERDICT: Don't bother. Even Independence Day is better.

IMDb