Battleship review

Cal Zapata: If there is intelligent life out there and they come here, it's going to be like Columbus and the Indians, only we're the Indians. 

Director: Peter Berg
(2012)

 When viewing a film like battleship, it’s only fair to set your expectations accordingly. There is no point a cinematic masterpiece, especially considering pop singer Rihanna is in a starring role. Even with these not so great expectations, battleship is still a poor film, produced solely to appeal to lovers of bright lights and loud noises.

For me, action scenes are as only good as their context. In battleships case, its biggest selling point; an expensive concoction of visual effects and deafening noises falls remarkably flat. The plot is simple; aliens invade the seas around Hawaii, using a forcefield to trap 5 US/Japanese ships to force a small scale war. One of these ships is helmed by protagonist Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch), who tries to stop the alien fleet. The main characters on this ship have been established previously as annoying and unlikeable; if any were to die in the first minutes of the invasion, I wouldn't bat an eyelid. From here we get lots of meaningless explosions until 2 thirds of the way in where the ships play an actual game of battleships (the board game the film is based off of). It’s here the action scenes change from dull to ridiculous, and still fail to hold any tension or suspense.

Unfortunately, battleship isn't content with just being a dumb action film; instead, it dedicates far too much time to characters that are shallow and poorly written. Rihanna is only present to attract a bigger audience and Taylor kitsch reaffirms everyone’s belief that after john carter he isn't cut out to be a leading man. The only decent performance comes from the reliable Liam Neeson, but his role was over played; he only had 2 minutes of screentime. The plot is brimming with holes, inconsistencies, poor dialogue and ridiculous moments, even considering its genre. The alien ships don’t have bullet proof glass. A man can choke out an alien in a robot suit using his prosthetic legs?? An alien ship can use a sonic shockwave attack which shatters glass windows, but does nothing to the speedboat that is positioned just metres from the initial blast. The final straw is when an alien confiscates a briefcase (vital to stopping the invasion) form an IT technician, then gives the briefcase back to said technician and lets him escape. Like many things in battleship, it makes absolutely no sense.

The madness continues during the films climax that involves using a ship that’s been acting as a museum to fight the remaining aliens. The film goes out of its way to state that the ship is old and has manual controls and targeting systems, yet 5 minutes later Rihanna is using a touch pad control panel to send a barrage of shells towards the enemy. Besides, why would a decommissioned ship acting as a museum still store live munitions? The film is riddled with trash like this, it seems director Peter Berg and co thought the pretty CGI would cover up the films flaws. They couldn’t have been more wrong.

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