Battleship

‘Battleship’ is based on the Hasbro naval combat game, so not much is expected of it but lots of mindless explosions and shooting. The film fulfills exactly that expectation, because besides the amazing special effects there’s nothing else nutritious in it. This navy propaganda movie has an extremely weak storyline, encompassing dialogue and comedy that are merely attached to try to make the film function as a whole. This movie continues the alien movie lineup to be seen this summer, I’m quite sure this will be the worst one of them all.

 

The Storyline revolves around Alex Hooper (Taylor Kitsch), who is basically a screw up and doesn’t have many goals for himself. His older brother Stone (Alexander Skarsgård) is the complete opposite and enrolls him in the navy. After what seems a couple of years later, Alex becomes a lieutenant and during a Naval war games exercise in Hawaii his crew, which includes R&B singer Rihanna, get involved in an extraterrestrial sea battle for the Earth’s survival.

 

The movie wastes a lot of time building a back-story, made up of romance and the brothers bonding along with an enormous amount of Navy propaganda. All pretty unnecessary and somewhat boring, that whole first 30 minutes or so could have been reduced to a five minute clip. The most outstanding thing in this movie are the spaceships, they are so real and detailed and the explosions and action they deliver are the best things this movie offers. The Halo like outfitted aliens are somewhat original and more real than most, but despite the obvious fact that they are more technologically advanced than us there’s not a lot of intelligent actions on their part.    

 

Liam Neeson once more signs up to be used as an advertisement tool by a mediocre film, given the fact that if you put all the scenes he’s in total, we only see him for about ten minutes. I actually wasn’t too annoyed by Rihanna, since most people such as myself have already judged the movie by her being in it; she played a tough chick without her usual eroticism in her music videos and just followed orders, her lines like the rest of the script are just flat; so not much acting was used. Kitsch and Decker are just eye candy, because nothing really intelligent comes out of their mouths. Another interesting scheme used to persuade the public into cheering for the movie is an appearance by a President of the United States, if this isn’t the biggest most annoying use of propaganda, I don’t know what is. The movie screams patriotism in a cheesy, in your face, “be a hero and sacrifice your life for your country” kind of way.

 

The storyline is so weak that it seems to contradict itself towards the end and there’s never a clear reason as to what the aliens are doing in our planet. It’s just an all out war and a whole lot of shooting without an explanation behind it. What’s worst is there’s a scene at the end of the credits that alludes to a second part. If you enjoy action for the sake of it and don’t care about anything else that makes up a movie, then you can enjoy this. Otherwise, I say wait for the rest of the alien invasion arriving this summer 2012 in theaters.