BATTLESHIP
Who’s in it:
Taylor Kitsch, Alexander Skarsgard, Liam Neeson, Rihanna and Brooklyn Decker
Who made it:
Peter Berg – Director
Peter Berg, Brian Goldner, Duncan Henderson, Bennett Schneir, Sarah Aubrey and Scott Stuber – Producers
What’s it about:
Milton Bradley’s enduringly popular strategic board game makes the leap to the big screen in Hancock director Peter Berg‘s epic sci-fi adventure pitting an international naval fleet against an army of invading aliens. When the two forces find themselves evenly matched, each must rely on strategy and cunning in order to emerge the victor. Taylor Kitsch and Alexander Skarsgard head-up a cast also featuring Liam Neeson, Rihanna, Brooklyn Decker, and Tadanobu Asano.
4.5/10 – More explosions than acting
What can I say about a movie based on a board game where all you’re supposed to do is place some plastic pegs in round holes in the hope of sinking your friend’s “strategically” placed plastic pegs? Not much. Battleship is the summer blockbuster movie we’ve all been expecting – overly loud, unnecessarily long, pretty dumb and for the most part, bad scripting and acting. It isn’t a fun movie, but it isn’t terrible either, its just there. All you can do is shrug, eat your popcorn and watch as a US Navy Battleship does battle with an Alien version.
Taylor Kitsch plays Alex Hooper, a perennial screw up and underachiever who is enlisted in the navy by his brother Stone (Alexander Skarsgard) so that he can get his act together. But Alex somehow always manages to undermine any progress he makes by doing something stupid. So when he is given one last chance to embark on another naval exercise he glumly accepts, but before the exercise is completed they come across some alien vessels which unleash a forcefield that traps Alex’s ship and two others with them. Once the shooting begins, the US Navy loses two ships, this leaves Alex as the senior officer, and he has to dig deep to discover the hero and leader he was born to be.
The plot is rather simple; some aliens arrive on earth and decide to set up shop in the Pacific Ocean by creating a dome that traps some battleships with them. Both aliens and humans then decide to start shooting each other. Lots of things explode, Kitsch does that thing where he barely opens his mouth to speak, Rihanna acts tough and Neeson just sits back waiting for his cheque to clear.
Having watched the movie though, it has to be said the comparisons with Michael Bay’s Transformers aren’t quite accurate. Sure there are aliens here with gigantic robotic looking things, but they aren’t that interesting to look at and all they do for most of the movie is thrash across the ocean. Even their weapons get boring after a while, you can only watch pods explode on impact and metallic wheels destroy everything in sight for so long. And by so long, I mean long, this movie is over two hours long, and when you consider the plot, that’s a bit much.
To say its a dumb movie may be an understatement, but to say it isn’t fun may be a bit much but not that far off. If all you want to see is a movie devoid of all logic, where humans put it to their would be alien conquerors by destroying everything and anything they throw at them, while trying to explain the plot without really saying anything, and you have endless patience, or are a massive, massive fan of Rihanna, then this movie will deliver, if not, stay home.
All in all, Battleship is the major summer disappointment so far.
I’m with you in the disappointment. Luckily, I saw the movie as a matinee, cheap. I did not spend that much money on it.
Lucky you, almost slept off at times but I just kept remembering how much I paid to get it.