Rated
PG-13 (Intense Sequences of Violence, Action and Destruction, and for Language)
Running
Time: 2 Hours & 11 Minutes
Cast-
Taylor
Kitsch-Lieutenant Alex Hopper
Liam
Neeson-Admiral Shane
Robyn
‘Rihanna’ Fenty- Petty
Officer Cora 'Weps' Raikes
Brooklyn
Decker-Samantha Shane
Alexander
Skarsgård-Commander Stone Hopper
Tadanobu
Asano-Captain Yugi Nagata
John
Tui-Chief Petty Officer Walter 'The Beast' Lynch
Jesse
Plemons-Boatswain Mate Seaman Jimmy 'Ordy' Ord
Gregory
D. Gadson-Lieutenant Colonel Mick Canales
Hamish
Linklater-Cal Zapata
Adam
Godley-Dr. Nogrady
Directed
by Peter Berg
 |
| Taylor Kitsch is wondering why Rihanna sunk his battleship in Peter Berg's dumb science fiction action film based upon the famous Milton Bradley (now owned by Hasbro) board game. |
Now
I’m positive that Hollywood is run by
monkeys wearing expensive suits! When Universal announced a film adaptation of
the famous board game Battleship in
2009, the news was largely met with derision. Director James Cameron added his
own two cents with the following remark: ‘We have a story crisis. Now they want to make the Battleship game into a film. This is pure desperation’ and found such a
project to be a degradation of cinema. First published by the Milton Bradley
Company (now owned by Hasbro, Inc. since 1984) in 1943 as a pad-and-pencil
game, Battleship already had a
worldwide reputation that predated World War I. The famous board game format
where players utilized a plastic grid with holes where pegs could be inserted
wasn’t published until 1967. The current iteration from Hasbro was released in
2008 and features small islands where your ‘captured man’ can be hidden. Directed
by Peter Berg of “Friday Night Lights” fame, “Battleship” the film has very
loose ties to the board game and features a naval battle between a group of
alien invaders and…battleships! A rip-off of numerous science-fiction films and
video games, “Battleship” is, not surprisingly, a mind-numbingly dull
experience that drops story and character in favor of bludgeoning its audience
with a barrage of CG explosions for close to two hours. The summer movie season
is always full of dumb flicks like these but this one is likely to turn you
into a brain-dead zombie.
In 2005, a group of NASA scientists led Dr. Nogrady
(Adam Godley) discover a planet with similar conditions to Earth. Dubbed
‘Planet G,’ NASA transmits a powerful signal from a massive communications
array in Hawaii, which will be boosted by an orbiting satellite. Meanwhile,
Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) is celebrating his birthday at a bar in Oahu with
his older brother Stone (Alexander Skarsgård). An attractive woman comes in to
order a chicken burrito but is refused service by the bartender. Smitten, Alex
decides to impress her by getting a chicken burrito from a nearby convenience
store. Unfortunately, the store closes just as he arrives and he ends up
breaking in. The police arrive and stun him into submission with tasers but not
before Alex delivers the burrito to the woman. Stone angrily berates his
brother for his reckless behavior and reveals that the woman is Samantha Shane
(Brooklyn Decker), daughter of United States Pacific Fleet commander Admiral
Shane (Liam Neeson), his superior. To prevent him from ruining his career,
Stone forces Alex to join him in the United States Navy. Seven years later in
2012, Alex is now a lieutenant and the Tactical Action Officer onboard the
destroyer USS John Paul Jones while
Stone is the commanding officer of the USS
Sampson. Alex and Samantha are currently in a relationship and the two want
to get married but Alex is afraid to ask for permission from her father. During
the Rim of the Pacific Exercise or RIMPAC naval exercise, Alex brawls with
Japanese officer Captain Nagata (Tadanobu Asano) after losing a game of soccer
to his team, the latest in a series of incidents that results in his discharge,
effective at the end of the naval exercises. RIMPAC is interrupted by the
arrival of five alien ships in response to the signal sent by NASA. One of the
ships collides with an orbital satellite and crash-lands in Hong Kong, causing
catastrophic damage but the rest land near the coast of Hawaii. Alex leads a
team comprising of Gunner's Mate Second Class Cora Raikes (Robyn ‘Rihanna’
Fenty) and Chief Petty Officer Walter 'The Beast' Lynch (John Tui) to
investigate but one of the ships erects an impenetrable force field, separating
three of the battleships from the rest of Admiral Shane’s fleet. The alien
ships quickly destroy the USS Sampson
and Myōkō, leaving Alex the only
senior officer to battle the invaders in a fight to save the Earth from
extinction.
James Berardinelli of ReelViews writes that “Battleship” ‘has the
IQ of a rutabaga and doesn't require much more intelligence than that to watch’—a
perfectly apt description for such a profoundly insipid mess of a film. The
story from writers Jon and Erich Hoeber is as paper-thin as they come and
despite spending close to forty minutes setting up the characters, none of it
really matters once the explosions start going off, which goes on and on for
the better half of the film. Berg’s attempt to turn our brain issue into mush
reeks of desperation as you soon grow numb and simply stop caring about what’s happening after the umpteenth explosion.
There’s not a hint of originality in “Battleship” as it liberally borrows from
video games such as “Crysis” and “Halo” to similarly-themed science fiction
films like Roland Emmerich’s “Independence Day” and even Michael Bay’s
“Transformers.” Outside of a throwaway flashback scene, the script never
provides any tangible motivation for the alien’s arrival and the way they are
depicted lacks any logical consistency. Their ships are established to be nigh
invincible in the beginning but easily fall apart like Papier-mâché by the end.
For a race that is able to traverse millions of light-years, I find it puzzling
that their ships cannot fly but instead hop around like frogs. Their armor is
bullet-proof but apparently, no one bothered to do that for their ships and one
of them is defeated due to the fact that their weapon turrets cannot fully turn
360 degrees. Little things like the ones I mentioned ultimately undermine the
film because it is forced to cheat in order to allow our heroes to be victorious.
Berg even shoehorns an actual game of Battleship
when the USS John Paul Jones begins a
cat-and-mouse chase with the alien ships through the use of a grid system.
However, no one says the famous line, ‘You sunk my battleship!’ The film gets
even more ridiculous, devolving into a Navy recruitment video once a group of
old war veterans show up, apparently just waiting to be called upon! The only
praise I can give is that the visual and sound effects genuinely look very
polished and the humor at least does not fall into the juvenile depths that
plague numerous Michael Bay films.
The acting ranges from laughably bad to
cringe-inducing thanks to the terrible dialogue and non-existent character
development. Taylor Kitsch looks the
part of an action hero but we’ve seen such a stubborn and hot-headed character
dozens of times before in better films. Alexander Skarsgård ends up shouting
all his dialogue and is quickly dispatched away. Making her movie debut is
singer Robyn ‘Rihanna’ Fenty, who is not
a good actress to put it lightly. Some of the lines she says make absolutely no
sense. Her character remarks that her father knew that one day the aliens would
come but how this knowledge was obtained is never elaborated upon. I really do
not understand this recent trend of having singers and supermodels starring in
films. These people should stick to what they’re good at and stop dragging down
the standards of cinema with their god-awful acting skills. Brooklyn Decker is
once again just a pretty face running across the screen in a tank top. The only
actor who comes out relatively unscathed is Liam Neeson but his screen-time
amounts to a glorified cameo. Still, it’s always a joy to hear him chew someone
out as this was the only good scene
in the film. I sure hope he was paid well for his trouble.
To be released on
May 18, 2012, “Battleship” has received largely negative reviews with 37% on
Rotten Tomatoes but what us critics think matters little. I managed to see the
film at an advanced screening two days before its wide release in North America
and the audience responded with enthusiastic applause. I simply shook my head
in embarrassment and sighed in defeat at such a reaction. Afraid of having it
become a major flop, Universal opened “Battleship” a month early overseas and
has earned a respectable $215 million worldwide, enough to cover its production
budget but it is unlikely to reach blockbuster status in North America when a
far superior film is already in theaters. I am referring to Joss Whedon’s “The
Avengers.” Most analysts are pegging a debut of $35 to $40 million, which is already
too much. If you’re a fan of dumb CG action films like this one, then you’ve
already made up your mind about “Battleship” and nothing I say can dissuade you
from seeing it but for anyone possessing at least a modicum of intelligence,
you’re once again better off watching “The Avengers” in support of actually good films.
Final
Rating: 1.5 out of 5
Lieutenant
Colonel Mick Canales: Let's give the world one more day.
Cal
Zapata: Who talks like that?! (only people who can't write worth a damn talk
like that)
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