Fridae

World Invasion :Battle Los Angeles is the antidote to every bad alien invasion flick that has been made in the past decade – from ridiculously inane flicks where the Americans save the world courtesy of Will Smith-piloted fighter planes to ridiculously stupid flicks where the aliens invade the world to steal our brains.

The makers of World Invasion :Battle Los Angeles seem to recognise that the premise of an alien invasion always borders on the ridiculous, and their remedy is to create an alien invasion film that plays more like an action/war flick strongly influenced by the likes of Black Hawk Down and the SOCOM series of Playstation third-person shooter games.

While there is technically an alien invasion going on and you will see some alien soldiers, motherships, drones and weapons, this film isn’t all that fixated on alien design and modelling for a line of MacFarlane-style collectibles. It also isn’t all that fixated on the human drama either, despite the obvious disaster proportions of the invasion. What the creators of this film are most interested in is telling a war story starring soldiers.

Gamers will recognise the impact that SOCOM has on this film. For one, it plays like a well-paced video game with short scenes of dialogue and exposition interspersed with much larger action sequences that are well-paced, often presented as mini-missions that the team may opt to undertake. These include saving and then escorting civilians out of the war zone, bringing down an alien spacecraft, fighting off ambushes, trying to obtain armoured transport, and so on.

Aaron Eckhart, a B-list leading man for far too long, shows that he can helm an action flick and even channel John Wayne here. This is a bonus for an action film that is loud, filled with exploding objects flying at the screen, and punctuated by incidental screams like “Retreat!”, “Attack!”, “I’m hit!” or “It’s an ambush!”

World Invasion :Battle Los Angeles is a film that you wouldn’t feel stupid or ashamed to watch. You can take your chances with this.