DVD Release
Modern day Los Angeles is under
attack from extra-terrestrials. A squad of U.S. Marines is sent to retrieve an
unknown number of civilians from a police station within an area already
destroyed under heavy fire. The team have three hours to clear the area before
the location is levelled by the U.S. Military.
The film is poor on pretty much
every level: the plot is unoriginal; the characters are boring and undeveloped;
the script is clunky; and there is a distinct lack of tension or emotional
engagement. Aaron Eckhart heads the squad as the war veteran who just wants to
retire, and adopts a very gruff and breathy speaking technique – he sounds like
someone doing a bad imitation of Clint Eastwood. All the other characters are
fairly interchangeable – one has some black war paint on his face, one was seen
in therapy at the start of the film, and one is female, and the rest don’t
amount to much. There is a shockingly bad speech in which Eckhart tries to
rally his troops in their darkest hour (and ours, incidentally) which has none
of the gravitas of Pacific Rim’s ‘We’re cancelling the Apocalypse’ or ‘Today is
our Independence Day’. The interaction with the child characters (whose
appearance is pretty inevitable) is clichéd and annoying.
There’s a really horrible scene
in which Eckhart dismembers a living alien. It’s a truly disgusting moment, not
only for the blood and guts flying around, but also because it is done in bad
taste. This moment happens pretty early on in the film and from then on it was
impossible to care about Eckhart’s character, and I just wanted him to die
cruelly. In a piece of news footage, a professor states that the aliens may
have come for Earth’s resources and when an invader comes for these, it is
necessary to ‘wipe out the indigenous population’ – whether this is some kind
of political statement, or just an excuse for the characters to cheer at the
death of any alien and salute the American flag at every opportunity , is
unclear but this film is such dross that it is impossible to really care.
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