Battle for LA

Decent film, nice movie to see with a crowd, so go for it.

Little warning, it is a military propaganda movie, not a glob of anti-military sentiment to be found, but besides that it's a good story about a marine who's coming to terms with the loss of the men under his command, I wish the movie went even deeper into his character, but otherwise don't expect more than typical captain america tough guy with brass balls wash rinse repeat from him throughout the movie.

The other characters are disposable, it's his story, and it's fun. I enjoyed the alien attacks and how they found ways to defeat them. I was hoping the movie would make the humans use little traps and tricks to defeat the aliens, and it pleasantly actually did. You can tell a man wrote the movie, he knows what we like. I can't watch a straight up dumb movie with a simple, no brains story-line, somebody has to do a fake-out or something clever, and of course it happened when the guy used the radio to draw the alien away from the bus and then tossed a grenade. Nice.

So it's not a stupid film, it makes your brain work out a bit, you question the motives of the characters, and in my case being former-military try to understand whether what you're seeing is true to life or just a sugar coated version of the real thing. I got to say it is watered down. There's only one moment I liked when the staff sargent threatened to kill one of his own guys for not staying with the group. THAT's how the military actually works. But it's downplayed in the movie, the marines fight for noble "protect the children" reasons, which is absolutely false. The military kills more children than they will ever protect. They're about themselves, to whatever end that takes them.

And there was no racism, wtf. There's tons of that in the mil, yet not only do the black guys mostly survive, it has a girl power angle too although I like how she's actually made to be a hindrance in one scene, finally movies are being more realistic. Women don't go into combat, I don't care what pictures you've seen, they're just 'ass' to fuck, not fodder for war.

But anyway, good flick.