Battle: Los Angeles

"Now you got three hours to get your ass back before those bombs drop, and make no mistake THEY WILL DROP! with... or without you"

Staff Sergeant Nantz (Aaron Eckhart) is on the verge of retiring from the US Marines when he gets called back into action one last time to help repel an alien attack on L.A. What scientists first suspect to be meteors turn out to be the ships of an unidentified species of alien who intend to colonise the Earth and drain its resources. Under the leadership of an untested Lieutenant and with a squad of Marines who don’t trust him, Nantz must help a band of civilians to escape Santa Monica before it is blown up by the Air Force.

This is a film with a multitude of problems which start with the character introductions. For a start there are too many, all introduced with a minute or two of back story. They are all stock characters which have been seen a thousand times. We have the guy who’s getting married, the untested Officer, the guy whose brother was killed, the guy in therapy, the guy from New Joizey, the guy from Texas and perhaps more unusually the guy from Nigeria who enlisted for citizenship. I couldn’t tell you any more about the characters than that and never really cared for any of them. Later they are joined by a female Air Force (pilot? I think) (Michelle Rodriguez) along with five civilians, three of which are children.