Battleship
Review by Anthony Morris
Much as it's easy to take swipes at the publicity
for Battleship as
being "from Hasbro, the toy company that gave you Transformers", it's
also a rare example of publicity that's actually helpful to audiences.
You see, being
produced by the toy company behind one of the biggest, most incoherent,
most slavishly military-worshipping movie franchises' of recent times
is something you really should know before checking this out.
There's a fair amount of story here but pretty
much all of it seems superfluous.
Humanity
sends out a signal into space to a "Earth-like" planet while drunk
loser Alex Hooper (Taylor Kitsch) gets grabbed by the cops after
stealing a chicken burrito in an attempt to impress a hot girl
(Brooklyn Decker).
Jump forward a few years, Hooper’s now
in the navy but still a screw-up, the girl is the daughter of Admiral
Liam Neeson, and when are we going to get to the Battleship?
First
we get some naval wargames, Hooper's career is over, a bunch of aliens
turn up in response to our signal and seal off Hawaii and surrounding
ocean with a force field (locking Hooper’s ship in and most of the navy
out) and then the fun really begins.
Though the "fun" mostly consists of fairly
standard CGI-heavy weird robot vs machine action, only this time it's
at sea.
The
aliens aren't afraid to clomp around in battle suits – and in one case,
have their teeth knocked out – though much like the aliens in Signs
their one major weakness is to something Earth isn't exactly short
of.
And no, it’s not bad acting, as Kitsch is actually
not
bad as the cocky smart-alec rebel hero dude (everyone else, on the
other hand, is forgettable at best).
Silly as it is, it’s
also slightly more technically accurate than it needs to be as far as
the ships are concerned… well, at least it is until the titular
battleship comes into play: seems those 1000 man World War 2 battleship
crews were slacking off, as they seem to work just fine with a dozen
crew, many of whom are in their 70s.
But the over-the-top
nature of much of the action is part of this films charm (and yes, it
does have some) : it’s big dumb action that occasionally lets us know
it knows exactly how big and dumb it is.
3 out
of 5
Battleship
Australian release: 12th April,
2012
Official
Site: Battleship
Cast: Taylor Kitsch, Brooklyn
Decker, Alexander Skarsgard, Rihanna, Asano Tadanobu, Liam Neeson
Director: Peter Berg
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