It's a movie based on the game of the same name; the one where you guess where your opponent's ships are on a grid, and you try to sink their ships. It's not a very intelligent game, but it's fun enough. The movie was produced to celebrate the game, and to evoke the story and experience one associates with the game (which is close to nothing).
As the board game itself doesn't have a story, they made up one. There's a bilateral navy exercise between USA and Japan off the coast of Hawaii. Just as this is happening, alien spacecrafts come crashing through the atmosphere and into Earth. The humans have to beat them. It's not the most original of stories, but even unoriginal stories can be entertaining. Like the fast food of movies.
Don't order this particular dish. Because it sinks (poor attempt on a pun with the word 'stinks'). It's a ship movie (poor attempt on a pun with the word 'shit'). Now on to my poor attempt of a review.
Let's talk about the story, first. It's incoherent. There's quite a few things going on in the movie, story-wise, but they're so poorly linked, and poorly portrayed, that it becomes one big pile of steaming hot turd. The movie kept jumping from scene to scene, that after a while, one's stops all attempts at keeping track.
This boils down ultimately to the characters, I think, and in this case, there were too many, they were too thinly-drawn and they were bad performances. If you care about the characters, then you'll care about the story too. The movie tries to introduce too many characters, and none of them are strong enough to carry the movie on their back. Case in point: a central character dies, and I couldn't care less. Special mention must go to the main character who was just...unlikable as hell.
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| This is the lead character. I wanted him to drown. |
Rihanna's in the movie too. She's heavily featured in the posters. They put her on the same level as the main character (whose name escapes me). At the end of the day though, she gets so little lines, and goes through no development whatsoever, that it just confirms what this movie is: Yet another money-making venture by the capitalists who brought you Transformers 3. She doesn't even song! Or wear a bikini!
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| What's her name in the movie? No idea. |
They didn't even say why the aliens wanted to invade the planet. Whattt. Or maybe it's because I wasn't paying much attention to the film.
The movie did have good special effects though. The explosions were realistic enough, and indeed, plentiful enough. They also tried to integrate some semblance of the game into the movie, which is appreciated. There were amusing moments too. I'll spoil it for you right here and now so that you won't have to, or will have less of an inclination to watch the movie: all their original ships get destroyed, and most of their crew dies. They board one of the older ships, and they get retired war veterans to help man it.
The movie's running time exceeds two hours. It's a disgustingly long, and draggy, and not worth the watch.
I watched this movie based on people's reaction on Facebook. I read the words "Awesome" and "Great" and "Cool" being tossed around. Lesson learned. Your friends are lousy at recommending movies.
DON'T WATCH BATTLESHIP.
PS: At the end of the day, the movie doesn't really matter right? It's the atmosphere, and the people you're with. If you want to watch the movie for the movie alone, then you should just watch it on the laptop. The movie might have been bad, but...it feels like it doesn't matter???
PSS: Liam Neeson is in this. Don't let his old-man sex appeal fool you. It still sucks.
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