For some masochistic reason you decide to watch Independence Day, realize it’s a steaming pile of crap (of almost Twilight proportions) and decide the only way to make the world a better place is to redo the film properly. What you end up with is Battle: Los Angeles. It’s pretty much the same story.
I’m not saying it’s a great sci-fi film, but it’s pretty darn good. I wasn’t holding out much hope during the first few scenes because the person with the camera seemed to be having a fit. On stationary shots where people were just chatting it looked like the camera was sitting on a washing machine during the spin cycle. Once the action kicked in the camera work seemed much more appropriate, even steady at times.
The feel was very much like that of District 9 and Skyline, which is a good thing in my opinion. Dirty and gritty wins out over Hollywood polish for me. The budget was quite a bit higher than those films, but it had some recognizable actors and everything was so much bigger. It still came in at $5,000,000 under the price of Independence Day, and that was made 14 years ago.
There were a few inevitable bits of cheese and gaps in story development, probably from cuts to bring it just under 2 hours, but it still worked pretty well.
I was surprised to see Ne-Yo in the film, but he did an OK job. If Michelle Rodriguez is one tenth as cool in real life as she is in films, she will be mine. Oh yes! She will be mine! It would be great to have a girlfriend who could beat the crap out of guys if they don’t respect my authoritah… 🙂
Cheers
Tim…
All is clear now!
I got me a girlfriend who beats the crap out of everyone who don’t respect her authoritah!
Dang, I knew I’d got it wrong somewhere…
🙂
Thanks, will be on the lookout for this movie: the old independence day never did much for me either.