Review: Battleship

MANILA, Philippines - There’s not much to say about Battleship except that it seems that as far as Taylor Kitsch’s leading man dreams go, the score is now 0-2. Unlike so many others who panned John Carter, I actually enjoyed that film. But with his new starrer Battleship, I have so many problems with it that I can’t put together a coherent thought pattern as it is exactly what the film lacks.

So forgive me if I just bring up points that may sound like they don’t have any connection with each other, other than that they can only exist in the Battleship universe.

Kitsch’s character, Alex Hopper is a 20-something dude who spends his birthdays celebrating at bars and hitting on chicks. His older brother Stone (Alexander Skarsgard) is with the Navy and he forces Alex to join him after breaking several laws just to impress a blonde bombshell, Sam (Brooklyn Decker).

Sam, as it turns out, is the daughter of Vice Admiral Shane (Liam Neeson) and Alex’s story arc involves him participating in a naval exercise between the United States and Japan, mustering up enough courage to ask for permission to marry Sam, and surviving an alien invasion.

The aliens find their way here as a result of a broadcast sent by scientists into deep space, towards the direction of the nearest “Goldilocks” planet, early in the film. They arrive on their space-ships and as soon as Alex makes first contact, the aliens put up a seemingly impenetrable dome that separates him and three other battle-ships from the rest of their fleet. We don’t immediately know the aliens’ intentions as they only seem to fire back when they feel threatened.

The aliens eliminate two of the naval ships, including the one that Stone is on, and so Alex finds himself seeking revenge and as the reluctant then decisive captain of the remaining ship. Several scenes later, he would give up the mantle to the Japanese captain Nagata (Tadanobu Asano) who he had a fight with earlier.
Here, we finally see the game Battleship integrated into the film and, as someone who never got to play the board game, I still didn’t learn anything about it.

This is where I stop as common sense proceeded to block out the inanity that ensued.

In the end, Vice Admiral Shane would say no to Alex and that is that.

In terms of visuals, Battleship seems to have borrowed a lot of ideas from Michael Bay’s Transformers films including, but not limited to, sudden zoom-ins, repeated scenes, and over-the-top explosions. And let’s not get into the acting as even the great Liam Neeson seemed to be in it just for the heck of it. Rihanna, however…

How a 15-year-old film about a sunken ship can blow one that’s supposed to have the benefit of technology on its side out of the water is a clear indication of how story will still remain important over special effects. Battleship, however, had very little of one and too much of the other.

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