Cast: Taylor Kitsch, Rihanna, Liam Neeson, Alexander Skarsgard and Brooklyn Decker
Director: Peter Berg
Ratings: 1.5/5
No emotions, no feelings... It's mechanical just like the game!
By Priyanka Ketkar
Had it been a video-game that we were watching, it would've been a superb experience. But for a movie, Battleship is an emotionless, funny (not in a good way), silly war between some robotic aliens and humans. Battleship, directed by Peter Berg, is based on the classic Hasbro naval combat board-game and I wish it had stayed at being just a game.
There is a love story, there is a story of an irresponsible boy realizing his responsibilities and there is an alien attack... Basically, Battleship ideally has it all, but it feels like it has nothing substantial.
NASA and some non-NASA people (God knows who gave them any authorization...) are trying continuously to connect with the outer-world. With the discovery of Planet G which has properties similar to that of Earth, the hopes of discovering life somewhere other than Earth are renewed. Huge satellite-dishes are set-up in Hawaii for this. "If there is life somewhere else, it will be like Columbus and the Indians... We being the Indians..." observes a shaggy-looking, washed-up rockstar look-alike, Cal (Hamish Linklater) who is apparently in-charge of that entire satellite-dish set-up. Meanwhile, the Navy is busy in their annual Naval games which are taking place in Hawaii. Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) is about to get dismissed from the Navy while his brother Stone Hopper (Alexander Skarsgard) has lost all hopes for his brother. Sam (Brooklyn Decker) who is a physiotherapist is hoping to get married to Alex but he somehow always does something wrong.
The aliens finally establish contact with Earth and land in water in their huge warships, ready to attack anything and everything that attacks them or appears to have the potential to attack them. They have a scanner (in their masks, or lizard-like eyes or their warships... not so clear about that) which scans people and things for weapons. Green means good to go and Red means danger which means they will destroy the things or people marked red. They land in water and create a shield in it which blocks a few Naval ships from the outside world. All the ships are now destroyed, all the Commanders-in-chief are dead. Who will lead them now? Of course, the hero Alex Hopper. "I can't do it," he says... "If you can't do it, then who can..." says a Naval officer and that is the kind of conversation and dialogues you will come across throughout the movie.
I was actually waiting for them to discover a way to get rid of those aliens... But they come up with a really lame theory that the aliens are scared of sunlight and they use this theory just once. Soon, they forget about this and prefer fist-fighting or gunning them down. Why are the aliens here? No idea. What do they want? No idea. How are we going to get rid of them? No idea... No wait, how about trying a few machine gun shots (machine gun in Rihanna's hands) at the huge alien warships? That solves it all, right?
In the end, everyone lives happily ever after. And wait for the end credits to get over; there is the dinosaur's-one-last-egg-moment where only one alien survives only to come back with a sequel I guess.
Acting is zero. Singer Rihanna is the sole female officer in the Navy and all she does is make puppy faces, pull the trigger and run like a maniac. Liam Neeson is wasted. Hamish Linklater is the only person who brings some comic relief to the film. Dialogues are extremely, terribly, mind-numbingly unnecessary. The several deaths of loved-ones and strangers and the huge destruction is treated in a very non-serious way as if we are used to such alien attacks.
The movie is extremely long but doesn't get boring due to its continuous, though unnecessary action. Those of you who love the Naval way of life and the superb ships and equipments, it is a treat to watch them here. Action is superb and so are the effects. Though the aliens rarely fight and it is usually just those tires on fire, still, it is fun. Had it been in 3D, the movie would've looked amazing. Well, but it is not and yet it still looks pretty decent. But looking good and being good are two very different things.
The movie needed more substance, more believable reasons and some real meaning behind those action sequences. Lack of any real emotions will get you disconnected with it and make you feel like you are watching a video game.