Battleship

Battleship                  

2012
Action
Rated: PG-13
Running Time: 131 minutes
Starring: Taylor Kitsch, Brooklyn Decker, Liam Neeson, Rihanna, Alexander Skarsgard
Directed By: Peter Berg
Rating: 2 out of 10

Outline

It is humans versus aliens on the water with the earth’s survival on the line.

Review

I hate having to write this review. Let me correct that, I really, really, hate having to trash a film that Liam Neeson is in. To be fair he only has a small role in this movie to give it some street cred but still. Battleship is based on the board game of the same name and it really sets a new standard in awful film watching. I hope this is not a new trend in making movies based on board games. They are going to be even worse than video game movies and that is hard to do. The movie centers around a fleet of mostly American military ships having to face an arsenal of unknown alien design. That is as deep as this movie gets. I disliked this movie during the opening scene. I hated it by the middle, and simply loathed it by the end.  There is a reason that no A-Lister or even seasoned actor ended up in this film. That reason is this script is terrible. Instead we get virtually unknown actor in Taylor Kitsch playing the lead, Lieutenant Alex Hopper. 2012 has been a banner year for Kitsch. He was the lead in Disney’s John Carter film which is one of the biggest financial flops in cinematic history. He now adds this disaster to his resume and it will be a wonder if he is a lead again for a long time. We are introduced to Lieutenant Alex Hopper and he is the classic disappointment navy guy who just doesn’t fit in. He is constantly late and a general embarrassment to the uniform. He is then thrust in to the forefront where he can shine when the Aliens arrive. He actually does an okay job with the role and action scenes but it was a lost cause from the start. The film makers figured if they threw an estimated 200 million plus dollars into this film that story would not matter. They couldn’t have been more wrong. The film from about half way through is a loud, inexplicable, exploding mess. Usually solid director Peter Berg took a page out of Michael Bay’s playbook and blew up everything. He leaves all thought to dialogue and character development behind and just goes for the massive action scene payoff. The visual effects are good but not amazing for the amount they spent on this film. When the explosions finally stop for a moment the viewer is presented with the widest array of nonsense ever to grace a film. Amputees and old men somehow work their way into the storyline and it is quite strange. As bad as the movie got there are three things I hated more than everything else. The first and it happens in every alien movie is the aliens have the strangest way of fighting. They always have weird quirky fighting techniques that obviously humans figure out in five minutes and exploit. The second thing I hated was they actually play battleship to fight the aliens as a plot development and it was atrocious. The third and easily the worst thing of this movie was singer Rihanna playing Petty Officer Weps. She is so bad she should be called Jar Jar Binks of the seven seas. There are many more problems with this film but really I am sure you get the idea by now. This easily could win worst movie of 2012. I cannot recommend this film as some people might call it A1 I call it a miss.

T Factor + if you like lots of action in your movies then this could score higher on the rating scale.

T Factor – If you need great dialogue in your movies then this could score lower on the rating scale.

If you liked this movie reel recommendations: Battle LA, or Independence Day