Battleship (2012) starring Taylor Kitsch, Alexander Skarsgård, Rihanna, Brooklyn Decker directed by Peter Berg Movie Review

Battleship (2012)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Taylor Kitsch and Rihanna in Battleship (2012)

Sunk and Destroyed

Lieutenant Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) has a reckless side much to his brother's annoyance especially as Alex is pushing his luck and could be booted out of the Navy at any time. But Alex finds himself on board Admiral Shane's (Liam Neeson) battleship during the Pacific Exercise in Hawaii and during this exercise they come across a fleet of alien spaceships where upon all hell breaks out as battle commences.

131 minute, ask yourself the question of what else could you get done in 131 minutes before sitting down to watch "Battleship" as there is a very good chance that even before the movie is over you will be wondering what else you could have been doing. In fact less than 30 minutes into "Battleship" and I was beginning to question whether to give up on it rather than persevere and get nothing for my time.

The trouble starts with Taylor Kitsch and his character Alex as it is such a dumb character and a performance devoid of charisma that he bores you even when such comically stupid antics as robbing a general store for a burrito are thrown at us. It makes the first 30 minutes ominous, foreboding of worse things to come and sadly it gets no better when it comes to the other actors and characters who are as weak as Kitsch. Fans of Rihanna probably think her performance is great but to me it was weak, cheesy and cliche and certainly doesn't help in making up for Kitsch's lack of charisma.

Eventually "Battleship" throws some CGI action at us but as generic are the characters so is the CGI action. Maybe for young audiences seeing explosions rip through buildings and slow motion falling masonry will be exciting but for adults it is generic and in truth felt like they could have been lifted from any other recent CGI based action movie. Plus speaking fast or shouting does not make things exciting or tense especially when the actor doing the shouting doesn’t command your attention.

What this all boils down to is that "Battleship" really didn't do it for me and rarely have I watched such an easy movie only to end up bored out of my brains. It is lacking in so much and whilst young audiences might be distracted by the CGI bells and whistles anyone else is going to wonder how something so simple could have gone so wrong.


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