Battleship

Peter Berg – 2012 – USA  
  

Peter Berg is trying hard to become the next Michael Bay for some reason, but it probably won't work because he’s not really as superficial.  That doesn’t mean he’s a great filmmaker either, but when it comes to making bloated commercial crap, he’s no Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich.  The idea that this movie about Navy boys warding off an alien invasion can claim to be “based on” the famous (plotless) board game is absurd, but no more absurd than the movie itself.  With AC/DC songs pounding on the soundtrack constantly, and ludicrous montages of soldiers and veterans doing patriotic stuff, it seems like a really long TV ad more than a movie.  It’s odd to see an actor of Liam Neeson’s stature putting on a lazy American accent just to cash an easy paycheck; well, it’s not that odd, but still kind of depressing anyway.  It’s mostly about Taylor Kitsch being a long-haired screw-up who decides to join the Navy after his brother yells at him briefly and days later is somehow commanding a huge battleship.  After sinking that one and losing almost every soul aboard, he “re-commissions” a floating museum of his own accord and he and a bunch of octogenarians get it ship-shape in less than three hours.  Strangely enough, there is an intriguing detail in the alien story that it totally ignored and unexplained; the fact that they don’t just destroy everything in sight but seem to target weapons and industrial structures only, but never kill unarmed life forms.  Berg has no time to explore that, though, (even with the film’s 2-hour-20-minute running time), as he is far too busy creating one bizarre action sequence after another; all of which build to a climax that makes no sense.  I kept expecting one more finale since the resolution was so confusing, but nope; Taylor Kitsch just got his medal and shared a thumbs-up with Liam Neeson’s daughter.  A very weird movie.  It almost feels like a parody of blockbusters, and yet it’s no better than any of them.