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Friday, May 18, 2012

MOVIE REVIEW
Battleship

Real American Heroes And Slacker Zeroes



Gregory D. Gadson as Lt. Col. Mick Canales and Brooklyn Decker as Sam Shane in Peter Berg's "Battleship". 
Universal Pictures

    

by
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com        Follow popcornreel on Twitter FOLLOW                                           
Friday, May 18, 2012

"Battleship" is something of a curiosity: Peter Berg's bombastic, noisy and bloated enterprise is sunk almost dead on arrival as it messily tries to tie a mysterious out-of-this-world force that invades Earth episode with a story about heroism and bravery.  Mr. Berg, who is a capable director, allows the pomp and circumstance in his film to overtake the realms of coherence. "Battleship" opened in the U.S. and Canada today, but it is a film that will soon be lost and forgotten amidst an avalanche of special effects and trumped-up patriotism that seems self-serving and oh-so convenient.

Mr. Berg spends two hours extolling the virtues of a lazy, shiftless, short-cutting jock type Lt. Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch, "John Carter") who seems to believe in nothing except his ego and getting a burrito for Sam Shane, a pretty woman (Brooklyn Decker, "Just Go With It") who is famished.  This burrito episode is taken to foolish extremes, in what is ripped right from an archive edition of "America's Funniest Home Videos".  His older shipmate brother Cmdr Stone Hopper (Alexander Skarsgård, "Straw Dogs", "Melancholia") whips him into shape early on, and soon after -- hey presto, he's ready to graduate.  He wants to marry his burrito sweetheart but he'll have to impress upon her admiral father Shane (Liam Neeson), who isn't impressed.

The banter, poker-face shenanigans and wink-wink comedy between Mr. Kitsch and Mr. Neeson (last seen in January in the hair-raising and intriguing "The Grey") largely works.  The rest of the movie however, intent upon mixing its noble loyalist warriors as they battle an unexplained, mysterious alien invader force with all-American can-do fervor, comes off awkward and ill-fitting, if not outright exploitive of the those who do the real fighting and sacrificing to preserve safety and protect the U.S. from attack. 

Many of the actual soldiers seen in "Battleship", some without limbs, are relegated to backdrop status, save the palpable presence and fine debut performance of Gregory D. Gadson, a U.S. soldier who lost both his legs in Iraq.  There's little doubt of his hero status.  (Unrelated: Mr. Gadson gave the New York Giants a pep talk in 2007 that helped sustain their 10-game winning streak and propel a Super Bowl title, and received a ring of his own.)

As Lt. Colonel Mick Canales Mr. Gadson is a commanding figure at odds with the film's cartoon juveniles.  The scenes he has with Ms. Decker belong in another movie altogether.  So does Rihanna, in her big screen debut.  As petty munitions officer Cora Raikes she has a key role but is given robotic, run-of-the-mill dialogue to chew on and spit out. 

In so doing Rihanna more or less sacrifices her natural ability and much of the charisma and appeal that has made her an international megastar.  She and every other big screen first-timer has to start somewhere however, and it's a safe bet that in her sophomore effort she won't be this flat and monotone again.  Scenes with Rihanna's speaking parts are like outtakes or auditions isolated from the rest of "Battleship", which is replete with segments that are isolated from and unrelated to each other.  I'm not sure that the editor or Mr. Berg quite knew how to stitch this film's together; what to keep, what to dispense with.  The result is chaos, tinny, ear-splitting bombastic chaos.

Even amidst the militarist heartbeat and musculature comes a sense that "Battleship", borrowing heavily from the Michael Bay school of junk and emptiness, takes itself half-seriously or at least seriously enough when special effects careen into the film.  Mainly exhausting but at times engineered by pounding on the heartstrings of redemption, "Battleship" is a film that feels very familiar and beats us into submission.  It's not the worst film by any stretch but it is one that lacks focus, freshness and imagination.

With: Peter MacNichol, John Tui, Jerry Ferrara, Rico McClinton
, Joji Yoshida.

"Battleship" is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association Of America for intense sequences of sci-fi violence, action and destruction, and for language.  The film's running time is two hours and 11 minutes.

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