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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
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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.
COPYRIGHT 2012. POPCORNREEL.COM. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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