The familiar sounds of clenching steel and roaring machines with lazers beaming everywhere from the franchise Transformers was part of the much anticipated Battleship movie.
The only difference is it was more battle at sea and this time no robotic machines helped the humans destroy the aliens, it was all in the hands of a navy team led by the ill-disciplined Navy lieutenant Alex Hopper, who was not only the much-liked naval Commander's brother, but was also dating the Vice-Admiral's daughter.
The movie was delayed for two and half hours, quite a disappointing wait, but that didn't deter us, we were keen on watching this movie, so we waited desparately.
Much anticipation was set on seeing Rihanna who played the brave, tomboyish, gunner and Petty Officer, Cora Raikes. She was a crew mate and a weapons specialist on the USS John Paul Jones. She acted alongside Taylor Kitsch alot. It was her first movie and everyone wanted to see what she had to offer as an actress.
In my opinion, she wasn't given much opportunity to show her acting skills but she did her parts well, whether it was telling her co-navies to shut up, trailing around with her gun or setting her targets on fire.
She didn't have those emotional moving parts or stunts to showcase more acting skills. This movie could have had her doing more of that.
Another big name in the movie was Liam Neeson, who is always a favourite in Fiji, great acting roles, serious or comedy.
In Battleship, Neeson did not feature in any of the action scenes. Seems that this time he left it to the younger cast members while he acted the part of a stern father and dictating Admiral.
Taylor Kitsch who scored the leading role, had just recently acted in another much-anticipated movie, with aliens and out of space activity, in John Carter. In Battleship he joins a destroyer flotilla in an international training exercise off Hawaii. When the aliens attacked, they killed all of Hopper's superiors, leaving him in command of the John Paul Jones. With his new-unwanted role, he still manages to save the world from an alien invasion.
The movie tried to have everything in the book to make it a well-rounded film. It had comedy, romance, action and tragedy. But I wouldn't give it a 10 out 10. It would proba
bly sit on 7, transformers would still be a better choice. It seemed to lack substance.
The story about alien spacecraft from a race known as the Regents lands in the Pacific with the annihilation of humanity at the top of their to-do list didn't really sit well with me: it seemed to be the same old storyline.
But besides the plot, the movie was not boring รน there was action from the beginning to the end, with then no-job-loser Alex hopper, trying to impress his soon to be girlfriend, by breaking into the local mart to get a chicken baritto for her, and towards the end a somewhat 45,000 tonne battleship does a handbreak turn saving it from the massive blows the Regents gunned at them.
I also thought the plot twist where Hopper recruits a squad of worn out but spirited Second World War veterans to take on the invaders was a classic choice. To add to that, he used their 70-year-old decommissioned battleship that had been converted into a museum to save the day.
And of course all the special effects made up for the poor storyline, that's what attracts people to the movie more these days anyways, so with the good-looking cast and awesome special effects, Battleship claimed the epic notion. If you are all for the video-game type movie with loads of special effects and action and less storyline then this is a movie for you. Enjoy!