When watching Battle Los Angeles, an alien invasion action movie with volume cranked up to 11, a certain blink-and-you’ll-miss-it plot point left me feeling somewhat bemused. You see, it’s all about these meteors falling to Earth, without warning, conveniently avoiding all landmasses, yet belly flopping into the beautiful briny sea just off the coast of a number major cities around the world. These meteors turn out to be much meatier than expected, revealing a horde of alien invaders and cache of deadly weapons inside their cosmic cocoons. Suck it, San Francisco. You’re next, New York. Take that, Tokyo. Lie down, London. Die… Dingle. Yes, for some reason, one of these weaponised meteoroids comes crashing down in Fungie’s turf, presumably after their sat nav told them not to take that left turn in Albuquerque. How our Kerry neighbours fare is unfortunately not the path Battle LA chooses to follow, alas, but it’s safe to assume we all die.
However, in Southern California, in a city offering absolutely no strategic advantage to the militarised space invaders (they even get a couple of saucer-like air force ships, speeding across the sky to fast to shoot, worth their 300 point bounty), humanity makes its last stand. Aaron Eckhart, whose jawline is aptly chiseled, leads the marine team, and while there are no busty civilian boffins, it is made up of every other cliché left in the book; a staff sergeant with a shady past two days from retirement, a by the book wizkid who’s never been in combat, a career-driven female who wasn’t going to have kids, but is now stuck with two sprogs who won't stop wailing, a shy southern virgin, and a sage Nigerian surgeon, who, when realising the peril he’s entered, quips, “Shit, I’d rather be in Afghanistan. “ You and me, both, my friend, you and me, both.
