Now, that's an entertaining movie...

 For Date Night last night, the wife and I went to see Battle: Los Angeles. 

To steal a line from a review I read prior to going to see this movie: This is the movie Micheal Bay wishes he could make.

Total popcorn flick...I'm not sure there was much more than about 20 minutes without gunfire/explosions in the whole movie, and 10 of that was during the whole 'character development' part at the beginning of the movie. 

What I really like(and this is based of alien movies like 'Contact' and 'Signs') are movies where they don't keep you guessing about the aliens.  In Battle" Los Angeles, there is no guessing, because they start the movie with fighting, and THEN roll you back 24 hours to introduce everything. 

The plot?  Well...aliens invade the Earth to steal our water.  Aaron Echhart plays a Marine Staff Sargeant who is getting ready to retire.  He's a combat veteran who won some medals, but might have got some guys killed, including the brother of one of the guys in his new unit.  That lets folks doubt him, AND gives him a chance to win them all back.  Their Marine unit is initially sent into the conflict zone to retrieve some civilians behind the lines, but the mission quickly becomes survival. 

I like alien invasion flicks where the aliens are tough, but not invincible...no force fields, or regeneration powers.  Just fancier guns than ours.  Our bombs and tanks can kill them, you just need to hit them enough to keep them down.  This movie also does a good job of addressing the  whole .223 vs .308, in my mind at least.  They have to shoot these aliens A LOT to keep them down.

This movies about 17 times better than Skyline which the wife and I went an saw last year.  I would go as far to say it might even be better than Independence Day...although it's tough to compare...ID was flashier, bigger...this one if a much grittier movie....I can't/won't compare it to Saving Private Ryan...but maybe the Big Red One, or even, A Bridge to Far. 

To continue with the Independence Day comparison, we do get to the point where Aaron Eckhart's character gets to give hi big motivational speech...and in this catagory, there is some fail.  I was MUCH more ready to go kill some aliens after Bill Pullman's speech in ID than after Aaron Eckharts monologue. 

Still...very good movie...almost two hours long, but it felt like about 45 minutes.  Most worthy of paying the extra cash to watch/listen to it at the theater instead of waiting for it on video.