Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Battle: Los Angeles’ on Netflix, Where US Forces Fight Space Invaders On The Streets Of LA

We’re not saying Battle: Los Angeles is Black Hawk Down with aliens, but Battle: Los Angeles is Black Hawk Down with aliens. Switching out Somali militia for extra-terrestrial shock troops, B: LA grossed nearly $212 million worldwide on a budget that was half that.

BATTLE: LOS ANGELES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: “A Marine’s got a shelf life,” Staff Sergeant Mike Nantz (Aaron Eckhart) tells his commanding officer and fellow Iraq War veteran at the outset of Battle: Los Angeles. Nantz has humped 20 years in the Corps; his insight and aching knees are telling him it’s time to get out. But just as his discharge papers are being signed, an invading force of unknown origin, size, and strength begins arriving off the shores of major cities across the world, including Los Angeles and the Marine base at Camp Pendleton. As it turns out, the meteor shower that was all over the news wasn’t the fall of celestial objects at all. “NASA estimates they’re not hitting the water at terminal velocity,” a briefing officer barks to the Marines as they gear up to deploy. “They’re slowing down before impact.” And just like that, Nantz and a squad of jibber-jabbering Marines led by Second Lieutenant Martinez (Ramon Rodriguez) are boarding choppers to meet the threat. Along for the ride is the impressionable, good-hearted Private First Class Lenihan (Noel Fisher of Shameless), PTSD-scarred Lance Corporal Peter Kerns (Jim Parrack), loudmouth Jersey-ite Corporal Stavrou (Gino Anthony Pesi), and the self-assured Corporal Kevin Harris (Ne-Yo).

The city is already being overrun by alien ground forces once the squad arrives, tasked with evacuating any remaining civilians, and they’re quickly engaged in a house-to-house pitched battle with the armed-up E.T.’s they call “Ants.” Taking casualties and saddled with a slew of pedestrians caught in the crossfire (a group that includes Michael Pena as an earnest father toting his young son, as well as veterinarian Bridget Moynahan), Martinez, Nantz and the rest of the leathernecks are soon joined by Santos (Michelle Rodriguez), an Air Force technical sergeant, communications expert, and the only survivor of her unit. With little actionable intelligence on their extra-planetary enemy and even less line of supply, the Marines have to put aside their differences and draw on their training to fight their way to safety, even as they strive to determine how best to beat an alien force that’s well-reinforced and seems to know their every move. “We were tracking enemy transmissions about 12 klicks south of here,” Santos tells Nantz. “They ambushed us, like they knew our frickin’ address.” Will they survive the LA battlespace? Oorah.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Battle: Los Angeles channels the 2002 Ridley Scott warfighting classic Black Hawk Down in a heavy-handed manner, from focusing down on its close-knit group of grunts fighting an enemy on the rooftops to the very typeface it employs to introduce names and places. But there are echoes too of disaster movies, and also Independence Day (“We need to know how to kill these things!”). For similar (and better-executed) beats of honor among comrades-in-arms and outnumbered, outgunned battle sequences, consider The Outpost (2020), also streaming on Netflix.

Performance Worth Watching: His appearance as the cagey, noble Staff Sergeant Mike Nantz in B: LA put Aaron Eckhart on a course toward similarly square-jawed portrayals of stock characters, most notably as the harried, strong-willed President in the Antoine Fuqua-directed Gerard Butler genre actioner Olympus Has Fallen (2013). Playing crusading district attorney Harvey Dent in Christopher Nolan’s Batman films, these roles are not. But Eckhart is steady and sure handed, and ably channels a rough-hewn sense of empathy whenever it’s required.

Memorable Dialogue: The assorted devil dogs riding into this most unlikely of battles in a Chinook have pivoted ably to meet their alien foe. Aliens attacking the city? Just another day at the office, right? One of them calls out to Nantz (Eckhart). “Hey yo Staff Sergeant! Promise me you won’t let me be taken alive by some godless predator from another world?” But the crusty veteran noncom is all business. “No promises in combat.”

Sex and Skin: Nothing overt. But in its scramble for casual interplay between its service members, B: LA discredits the roles it places women in. Michelle Rodriguez, as Air Force TSgt Elena Santos, saves the lives of her fire team by unloading a magazine at point blank range into the body of an alien warrior, receiving a face full of splatter that’s not of this earth. Instead of thanks, a Marine offers puerile sentiment. “Are you gonna let him treat you like that on the first date?”

Our Take: Battle: Los Angeles is at its core a war movie, and one with the requisite cross-section of personalities in its assemblage of Marines and Air Force personnel. There’s the wartime veteran (Eckhart), whose entire engagement with the alien attack is to use it as a teaching moment for his cadre of young Marines. There’s the butter bar second lieutenant (Ramon Rodriguez) who makes a hero’s journey toward ultimate sacrifice. And there are five or six versions of assorted loudmouth leatherneck, each of them treading water with low-grade war movie dialogue bits like “tighten your asses,” “you didn’t deserve this, bro,” and “you had to make some tough calls.” Dump in hackneyed, scene-setting radio chatter — “Engage your sectors of fire!” “13:15 zulu time!” — and the fact of a militarized alien invasion recedes, to the point that for most of the film, the space warriors are viewed at a grayed-out distance, beyond generic muzzle flashes. The Marines we are coming to know could be taking fire from anyone or anything. To that end, B: LA has a lot in common with Peter Berg’s clanging sci-fi/war/board game hybrid, 2012’s Battleship, which weaponized dialogue and stock character cliche in its fight against an unimaginative alien foe.

In time, Battle: Los Angeles does arrive at a Big Showdown, with Nantz and the plucky Marines figuring out the tactical shortcomings and mortal vulnerabilities of the alien army all by their lonesome, an army that until that point had destroyed seemingly 90% of the western seaboard plus the entire offensive capability of the larger US military operating in the area. But it’s not the journey or even the enemy that wants to be the hook here. It’s the boots on the ground and their personal relationships that most buoy what B: LA is putting out, particularly in a couple of well-crafted firefights. It’s a movie about war and the people who fight it, even if this time around, they’re fighting an enemy from beyond the stars. The darker echoes of xenophobia that suggests — Who is this alien attacking my home? I must kill him first, ask questions later — need not be probed here, since Battle: Los Angeles is so unconcerned with exploring the bigger picture it exists within.

Our Call: STREAM IT, but only if war movies, Aaron Eckhart’s lantern jaw, or Michelle Rodriguez saying “frickin'” in the toughest manner possible are your thing. Battle: Los Angeles is only sci-fi when it has to be.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges

Watch Battle: Los Angeles on Netflix