Red Box Review: Battleship - Granite Grok

Red Box Review: Battleship

battleshipLet’s keep it simple.  Battleship is only good when there are ships and there is a battle.  So skip to just before the combat begins, anything that happened in the first 30-40 minutes or so you can work out for yourself by the end, and the battle sequences are a lot of fun to watch.  If you try to sit through the set up you’ll never make it to the good part.  And it was good.  Almost as if it were a different movie.

When you see the objects hurtling toward the earth’s atmosphere, that is probably the best place to start.

If you’ve got premium channels, by the way, the movie is currently available there as well (HBO I think), and worth the DVR space, assuming you skip the beginning.

So do you want spoilers?

Wise but cranky scientist warns everyone that we should be wary of sending messages in interstellar bottles to a recently discovered earth-like distant planet.  He reckons that if there is life there and they get the message, and they can make the trip, we’ll be the Indians to Christopher Columbus, and the European conquers that followed.  We send the message anyway…

You could skip to the alien landing at this point because he was right.

A series of objects come crashing through the atmosphere in formation.  One of them hits an orbiting satellite, breaks up and crashes into an Asian city killing over 125, ooo people.  Turns out that this was the equipment needed to call back to the home world for reinforcements–if it turned out that this place was worth the effort of exploring, raping for resources, ending the scourge of reality television…whatever.

So the other objects land in the south pacific, where–as it happens–the entire pacific fleet is out-to-sea (but not too far out) engaging in a massive multi-nation training mission.  Three ships break off to investigate the splashdown where some structures have risen out of the water.  These eventually come to life and produce a dome shaped impenetrable force field, trapping Hawaii, the three vessels from the exercise, with crew (sent to investigate), and all of the Hawaiian Islands in their dome.

The Aliens plan to use the same dishes that sent the message to send a message of their own.  Come on in the water is fine.  They did splash down in Hawaii.  The North Sea might have suggested a different course.

Combat ensues as the Aliens identify threats and engage with superior technology and firepower.  They eliminate all military threats, leave the nonthreatening alone, but then with most of the fleet trapped outside the dome, once the air support on Hawaii is destroyed there are only pockets of resistance, one of which is the remaining navel vessel, a US Missile destroyer.

Those pesky earthlings do have a pressing desire to survive, and when they lean or derive the alien plan to contact the home world, they know they need to destroy the satellite dishes so ET can’t phone home.

The story proceeds, and here is where the movie actually plays homage to the game the film is named after.  Radar does not detect these vehicles–sorry I forgot to mention that—but they do displace water and the massive vehicles that came to earth have been hovering, hopping and moving across the ocean.  They displace water.  So by using the extensive sonar bouy array designed to detect tsunamis, they are able to track their movements and target them with missiles.

They realise some success but, inevitably, the clever crew of the destroyer are outmatched and forced to abandon ship, heading for port on escape rafts, where the only remaining navel vessel at their disposal is the USS Missouri and souvenir stand.  The Battleship, ‘Battleship’ is named for.

Our persistent crew have no clue how to even start this antique or target its weapons from the pre-deigital age, so they team up with aging sailors who work on the ship (and were presumably stationed on the world War II era vessel when it was in service) and head out to kick some alien backside.

These sequences alone might be worth the effort of watching entire film, particularly if you happen to be a fan of military history.  The Missouri is an impressive craft, and seeing its old guns deliver some CGI enhanced destruction upon the alien interlopers just might give you goosebumps.

Oh yeah.  The troubled guy foced into command saves the planet and gets his girl, the angry Army soldier learning to live without his legs finds a reason to try when he needs to help save the world, and the aliens get their butts kicked.  There are some real hoo-rah moments in there and the navy comes out looking mighty good in the end.

All in all, a fun movie, well worth the buck and change, or just the time if you view it off your DVR as instructed; trust me…you can skip most of the beginning…it makes the rest of it a lot more enjoyable to watch.  With all the time you save, you could watch that part twice.

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