Battle:Los Angeles

Marine Staff Sergeant Michel Nantz is retiring from the service after 20 years. Unfortunately there are meteors hurtling through space towards earth landing just off the coast of major cities all around the world. Everyone realizes something must be amiss when the space rocks enter the waters at a controlled speed, they may not be just meteors. His unit is pressed into the battle to defend Los Angeles.

In my world I would have have Michael Biehn, the ultimate space Marine in the role of Staff Sgt. Nantz. Biehn is too old now so it's played with a world weariness by Aaron Eckhart. Nantz lost some of his men on the last tour. The men in his platoon are distrustful that he's been put in charge under 2nd Lt. Martinez (Ramon Rodriguez) who is just one month out of training school. Also Cpl. Lockett's brother was one of the men lost under Nantz, and he's got issues. But they don't have much time to think of that when they are thrown into the heat of things by having only threes hours to rescue some civilians holding up in a police station. Santa Monica is due to be bombed to stop the invading aliens. The quickly dwindling force meet up with another platoon and together they have to get everyone to safety while trying to battle seemingly indestructible aliens.

Director Jonathan Liebesman who also did The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning keeps the action as if looking over the shoulder of everyone. The concept does include some shaky camera syndrome, but not enough to make you seasick. It makes the POV more immediate, and you can feel the claustrophobia that marines in combat are experiencing. There are some tense moments as the Marines don't have any clue what they up against. When the aliens do show up they look part skeletal/mechanic/big headed creatures that is pretty much imagined in most sci-fi movies of late. Screenwriter Christopher Bertolini who wrote The General's Daughter uses every cliché movie device that involves military and aliens. Not surprisingly Michelle Rodriquez shows up as Tsgt. Elena Santos an Airman looking into how the aliens are communicating. Bridget Moynahan is Michele a veterinarian who only seems to be there to care for the kids being rescued. Ne-Yo plays Lockett the angry marine that blames Nantz on this brother's death. The rest of the platoon are like the red shirts on Star Trek. Expendable. Dialogue is pretty much kept to a minimum but Nantz does a great speech on what it is to be a marine. So basically this movie is a cross between Independence Day and a Marine recruitment commercial film. At least they didn't kill the alien space ship with a computer virus.
(Review by reesa)