thefriedgold

Directed by Peter Berg

Starring Taylor Kitsch, Alexander Skarsgard, Liam Neeson, Rihanna

Disappointing tearaway brother Alex Hopper (Kitsch) gets recruited for the US Navy by his Commander brother (Skarsgård) in effort to give him a future. Meanwhile scientists, beaming communications in to space, get a response. Aliens arrive while the Hoppers are taking part in naval war games and only the Hoppers stand in the way of alien domination.

Regular readers may remember this post where I said the trailer made Battleship look like a good bit of summer fun. Having missed it in the cinema, I’ve finally sat down to see if I was right. Following the success of the Transformers films – I use success lightly, the first film was fun but the others were intermittent at best – Hasbro has sought to make a board game in to a similar franchise. What could be an enjoyable romp is overlong, dull and definitely not a good summer blockbuster. The CGI (for a VERY recent film) is shoddy – greenscreen backgrounds are all too frequent and all too noticeable and the acting…Neeson phones it in, Kitsch plays his character from Friday Night Lights (directed by Berg, key difference is FNL is good) and the others are wasted. There is a pointless side story with Kitsch’s love interest that does little aside from detracting from the fight on the water. This, thankfully, is the stronger part of the film, featuring a neat way of tying the film to the game and is only missing the eye-to-eye brinksmanship of sitting at home.

Overall Battleship isn’t the fun summer blockbuster that I hoped it would be. It takes itself too seriously without being believable (Kitsch runs up the deck of a sinking boat even when vertical. I can accept aliens but on Earth this is just not possible) or enjoyable, not enough time is spent on the water blowing things up – surely a staple of a film about a game where you blow things up – and the story is an overlong muddle. I wouldn’t watch it if I was you, there are better blockbusters out there.

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If you like this then this isn’t the site for you. But it did remind me of Doom, with one sequence coming straight from the game, much like one sequence here. Watch Doom if you want to see a film requiring no thought, it has The Rock.