Battleship
Hit?
Miss?
It’s easy to be snobbish
about Battleship. It’s a movie based on a guessing
game. A guessing game that
actually predates the First World War!
It then gained widespread popularity in 1967 as a board game. Let’s face it, it’s not the most
obvious candidate for feature film adaptation.
Recently, jumped up whiny
comic book writer Alan Moore had a
massive whinge about the lack of creativity in the entertainment industry,
launching broadsides against Hollywood’s tendency to remake (or reboot) film
franchises, regurgitate classic TV series’ of the ‘60s and ‘70s and make films
based on theme park rides (Pirates of the Caribbean), even going so far as to suggest that one day
soon Johnny Depp will be playing a breakfast cereal mascot. While Moore has a point (though
personally, I can't wait for Frosties: The Movie. It'll be
greeeeeaaat!), this kind of sniping
could be considered a bit rich coming from an aging hippie pagan who writes
comics about neurotic superheroes.
Moore should be tied down and made to watch Battleship.
It may be dumber than an
Adam Sandler fan but it’s hard to deny that an admirable amount of creative
invention has gone into Battleship. Somehow, director Peter
Berg and screenwriters Erich and Jon Hoeber have managed to create a serviceable blockbuster event movie from such
a bare bones, ridiculous source.
It’s far from smart; it’s big, dumb, loud, schoolboy fun. But it is fun. In a
mindless, over-the-top, square-jawed, ludicrously patriotic kinda way. It has little pretension to be anything
other than what it is; a piece of lunk-headed entertainment, the perfect
accompaniment to the radioactive nachos, vat of popcorn and bucket of Coke
you’re going to buy at the cinema’s concession stand. If you’re the type of person who likes the Transformers movies (namely a teenage boy who’s never touched a
boob), you’ll love Battleship.
Here’s the plot: stoopid
brainiac scientists beam a message off into space looking for friendly
aliens. Unfriendly aliens hear the
message and invade the Earth, landing in the Pacific just off the coast of
Hawaii. Thank God a joint US and
Japanese navy taskforce, led by stern Admiral Liam Neeson are playing war games just off the coast of
Hawaii. With most of the taskforce
stuck outside the aliens’ protective force-field, the fate of the world rests
on the shoulders of naval loose cannon Taylor Kitsch. And
shapely-bottomed singer Rihanna. Seriously.
Leaving aside for a moment
the film’s virulent anti-intellectualism (It’s all the fault of those pesky
scientists! Grrr! Stamps foot,
waves fist…), the frankly culturally
insensitive idea of the US and Japanese staging war games anywhere near Pearl
Harbour (after what happened the last time?) and that a civilisation that’s
managed to develop faster than light interstellar travel hasn’t managed to
develop radar, Battleship is an
undemanding, entertaining waste of two hours of your life.
It doesn’t matter that at
no time do we learn what the aliens actually want with Hawaii (Hey! At least
the aliens in Independence Day and Battlefield
Earth were here to strip-mine
the planet! Who knows what these
bozos want?). Or why they’ve sent
such a ludicrously small invasion force to subdue the Earth (4 ships guys? Bit arrogant, there’s over 7 billion of
us…). Or even that we, the human
race, strictly speaking kick off an interstellar war by shooting first. Sure, it was a warning shot but how
were they to know? They’re
aliens. Up until the point where
luckless naval officer Alexander
Skarsgård fires a warning shot
across their bows, they hadn’t done anything aggressive. Maybe they were on holiday. They may even have been a visiting
church group. We’ll never know,
because the idea of actually attempting to communicate with the aliens, or even
take some prisoners, is obviously, well, an alien concept to the US Navy.
But Battleship isn’t the kind of film to ponder these kind of
questions. This is fast-food
filmmaking of the highest order, an orgy of explosive, cinematic mayhem. If you’re thinking of these kind of
questions during Battleship, you are
not Battleship’s target
audience. You’re probably one of
them pesky scientists that got us into trouble in the first place!
The cast is adequate; Kitsch
cements his leading man status with a charismatic performance and he and Ichii
The Killer’s Tadanobu Asano as the gruff
Japanese captain he joins forces with have real chemistry together. Rihanna is pretty one-note (like her singing, hur-de-hur-hur) in the obligatory
ethnic tough babe role that would usually be filled by Michelle Rodriguez,
Liam Neeson barks ineffectually from
the sidelines but looks damn fine for a man of his age in Naval dress uniform
and the best thing you can say about model Brooklyn Decker, Kitsch’s love interest and Neeson’s headstrong
daughter, is that she doesn’t bump into the furniture. Though given she’s playing a physio
taking a double amputee war hero (played by double amputee war hero Lt
Col Mick Canales) on a nature ramble up a mountain, there
really isn’t any furniture to bump into.
The biggest problem with Battleship
though is its militaristic jingoism.
Berg is the son of a US Marine and it shows. He’s made a dumb, popcorn action movie that’s rabidly,
heart-on-sleeve patriotic, drafting in veterans of World War Two (the retired
crew of battleship-turned-museum USS Missouri) and the War on Terror (Canales)
in minor, if significant, supporting roles. To all but an American audience, this naked, weepy love of
country and our fighting men will seem embarrassingly simplistic,
laughable. But, if you’re looking
for a film that questions American patriotism and foreign policy, again, you
probably aren’t Battleship’s target audience. Just sit back and enjoy the
explosions.
David Watson
Directed by:
Written by:
Produced by:
Starring:
Taylor Kitsch, Tadanobu Asano, Brooklyn Decker, Jesse Plemons, Alexander
Skarsgård, Liam Neeson, Rihanna
Genres:
Language:
English
Runtime:
2 hours 11 minutes
Certificate:
12a
Rating:
3/5
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