This movie is allegedly based on the Hasbro game called Battleship although it doesn’t seem overly affected by this.
The first half an hour is dedicated to building the backstory, although it doesn’t go far into the past – it’s all fairly recent history. This part of the movie has a bit of mild action and a bit of lighthearted drama – nothing too serious, and mildly entertaining. It’s pushing the miliary angle quite hard, but aside from that, it’s not a bad start to the movie – decent actors, decent cinematography, decent props, decent budget, etc.
Liam Neeson plays a US Navy admiral, and Rihanna plays a petty officer – they’re both strong supporting cast members but neither of them are the main character in this movie. The true star of this movie is Taylor Kitsch (with vibes like a cross between Chris Pine, Tom Cruise and Charlie Sheen) who plays Lieutenant Alex Hopper – a troublesome young Navy officer whose higher ranking brother, Commander Stone Hopper, convinced him to join the Navy for discipline purposes, but it didn’t quite work out. He’s about to be kicked out of the Navy pretty soon, but then something happens which changes everything.
On the first half an hour mark, things really kick in, and this movie becomes quite exciting, as alien ships find their way to Earth, and the whole thing is depicted with a good level of realism – well grounded yet with good cinematics, without skimping on budget. It’s actually quite creative and smart in its depictions of alien technology, and the visual special effects are pretty strong. The music and sound effects are strong too. Hollywood went all out with this one, in a conservative way. They seem to have been playing with a non extravagant budget and succeeding in being emotive without being soppy or projecting beta-male vibes, thus appealling very well to kind of people they’re probably trying to win over – to recruit into the military or at least think positively of it.
There’s also a good level of mystery sustained for some time from this moment on. 20 minutes later, Alex Hopper becomes the highest ranking officer in charge of the last remaining destroyer in a weird twist of fate since he was on the verge of being kicked out of the Navy – now all eyes and pressure are on him.
On the 1 hour mark, we meet these alien creatures up close & personal for the first time – not just their spaceships or communications or weapons technology, but we see the face of one of them. Hopper gets touched on the forehead by one, and their minds exchange thoughts for a few seconds. Then their friends come and extract the captured injured alien, but Hopper already knows their intention to take over the world, which gives him a new lease of life to prevent it.
Some of the best moments include when they take out an alien ship by shining sunlight in their eyes; when the last destroyer sinks and they man an old battleship with the help of some old veterans; when they sail that battleship with fancy manoeuvres to trick the aliens before taking out their mothership; and when the friendly jets appear at the end to save them from dying, since they’ve already managed to take out the mothership controlling the forcefield. Although it’s an incredibly one dimensional concept – very minimal in terms of plot – this movie still succeeds in entertaining very well, pretty much from start to finish, at least for those who haven’t seen it before recently enough to remember roughly how it goes. It does of course offer very little for rewatchers who can’t wait long enough to forget the key features of the simple storyline.
With all this in mind, I’m going to rate this a Decent movie – just one level down from the likes of Thor which has a more elaborate plot. This puts it on a par with the best James Bond movie ever made – The Living Daylights – from an action hero movie junkie’s perspective. Because I can’t think of a more powerful Navy oriented action hero movie in modern times. But I caution against rewatching it too soon because the appeal will be massively reduced that way, due to the extremely one-dimensional plot.