Battleship is an action packed flick that is loosely based on the american iconic video game of the same name. Directed by Peter berg, who also directed the block buster movie Transformers, and stars Taylor Kitsch, Alexander Skarsgård, Brooklyn Decker, Pop star Rihanna, and Liam Neeson. This heavy budgeted movie involves a barage of pyrotechnic and graphics display. From the trailer I'd say this is movie for persons with the taste for action movies, so if action flicks are your kind of thing your in for a treat with this one. Here are some reviews of the movie and a few of its trailers.
Times of India (c)
What happens when NASA detects and sends out signals to a potentially earth-like planet and they respond but only to destroy the earth!
Battleship is not like any other Alien film though. The aliens here are selective attackers who have no intention of killing humans. For some mysterious reason, they only destroy lifeless commodities like roads, bridges, vehicles etc. In this crisis situation, someone has to rise up to the occasion and save earth.
Cocky and jobless Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) who joins the navy due to his brother's influence is the underdog who jumps to the occasion and does the unimaginable. He declares war against the mighty aliens and their hi-tech weaponry with the help of a few navy officers, young and retired and a dysfunctional museum ship that was once a battleship. No prizes to guess who wins.
The film stays unconvincing throughout and that's its biggest drawback. Right from superficial performances to bizarre disjointed plot, the film evokes laughter when it should be ideally inducing panic! Subplots which add nothing to the film's buildup or story are plenty and appear only to take away the impact that is so essential for a film of this genre.
The Aliens which are always the most interesting part of any science fiction film too let the film down. They do not intrigue or scare you; they add further comic relief, given their distorted Chinese features and straw like beard.
Of the many sub-plots, nothing makes an impact on you. You feel indifferent towards the characters...living, dead, aliens. Alex's rapport with his protective brother, blonde girlfriend, her uptight idealist father and finally the aliens, all looks silly and theatrical.
Pop star Rihanna as the communicator cum fighter on the ship gets an insignificant side-role which is hard to even notice. She looks like just another boy!
Scenes are shown in slow motion to add impact but that tactic fails too as the dialogues that go with it are cliched to the core.
Battleship releases in India a month before US. US should be glad! If you happen to sit through the film and the end credits you will also get to see the trailer of the sequel. The franchise's hyper ambitious demeanor is baffling.
Verdict: Below Average
Totalfilm.com
By Matt Glasby
Hollywood has already laid siege to most of our childhood memories – even the ones it created itself.
After churning out enough remakes, updates and reimaginings to turn nostalgia to nausea, it’s decided to go one step further, adapting a board game so facile it can be easily replicated with a pen and paper. What’s next, Noughts And Crosses: The Movie?
Leaving aside the mercenary aspect – pretty tricky with Hasbro Toys on production duties – such an enterprise requires some serious padding, and Peter Berg’s swollen blockbuster more than delivers.
When aliens attack a fleet of naval destroyers (apparently actual battleships are now obsolete), Lieutenant Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) leads the rag-tag crew of the HMS John Paul Jones into the breach with just his cock-sure attitude and a cock-rock soundtrack.
What follows is nigh-on two hours of gale-force military fetishism, a script set to soundbite (“Boom!” says the underused, but surprisingly un-terrible, Rihanna, firing a cannon), and stratospheric levels of product placement.
At one point Hopper actually plays Battleships with real battleships (well, destroyers). Meanwhile, Michael Bay’s hectic editing provides the blueprint for the seasick action sequences, and the alien ships look exactly like Transformers – another Hasbro property.
So why isn’t such a frivolous concept any fun to watch? Probably because there’s nothing at stake but toy sales.
The aliens’ supposedly awesome weaponry only manages to destroy a few ships, a freeway and a baseball pitch. No shots last for more than three seconds – even the slow-motion ones – and no idea sticks around much longer.
Except for a brief scene of Hong Kong’s Bank of China Tower toppling to the ground and a vertiginous “Abandon ship!” moment, the CGI-heavy SFX feel rushed and contextless, like the console adaptation of an ancient blockbuster, rather than the reverse.
“It’s time for a game change,” barks Hopper’s brother (Alexander Skarsgård) with some justification. Fair enough. Anyone for Hangman?
Verdict:
Misguided
in the extreme. A scene in which Kitsch and co aim blindly for the
broadest of targets – and miss by miles – proves painfully apt.beyondhollywood.com
Whatever happens to Peter Berg’s “Battleship” at home, it seems the alien invasion actioner will do just fine overseas. Not a big surprise, as big-budget Hollywood action movies always do better overseas than at home, where the language barrier isn’t much of an issue when stuff are blowing up real good all the time. Deadline reports that “Battleship”, opening in multiple territories a full month before its U.S. debut in middle of May, is poised to take in around $300 million, perhaps more when all is said and done. In fact, by the time Stateside audiences get their hands on “Battleship”, everyone else in the world will have already seen it — well, except Paraguay and Canada, which gets the movie the same time as us.
This is actually very good news for me. I’ve always been a fan of Peter Berg, and the entire reason he did “Battleship” at all (a film that, admittedly, looks like a pretty routine sci-fi alien invasion actioner) was so Universal would then fund his Afghanistan-set war movie “Lone Survivor”, the true story of a group of Navy SEALs caught behind enemy lines. With “Battleship” doing as well as it’s doing overseas, everything at home will be gravy, and Berg should be able to write his own ticket for his follow-up.
Bring on “Lone Survivor”!
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