Battleship - Review

Battleship is an epic-scaled action-adventure movie based on the Hasbro board game, battleship.

I'd give it a 3.5 out 5.

Directed by Peter Berg, the movie stars Taylor Kitsch (John Carter) as Lt. Alex Hopper, a US Navy Tactical Actions Officer on the USS John Paul Jones; Alexander Skarsgård as Hopper's older brother, Stone, Commanding Officer of the USS Sampson; Liam Neeson as Admiral Shane, the commanding officer to Alex and Stone Hopper; Brooklyn Decker as Samantha Shane, a physical therapist, Admiral Shane's daughter and fiancé to Alex Hopper and Rihanna as Petty Officer Raikes, a weapons specialist on the USS John Paul Jones.

The movie introduces Alex Hopper and his brother Stone having a drink at a bar. Alex tries to pick up a women, Samantha Shane, in a most unconventional way, illustrating his impulsive and crazy decision making skills.

Skipping forward a few years Alex has join the Navy with his brother and they, along with a fleet of ships are embarking on a training exercise. After investigating some strange debris, the fleet is attacked and a force field is erected around enemy forces, cutting off contact between a few naval ships the rest of the fleet. Alex Hopper is left as the highest ranking officer and needs to take command. Leading the trainees against an unexpected enemy invasion.

Considering they'd based this movie on a game created almost 70 years ago, I think they did quite well. There was an easy to follow storyline broken up with a lot of action scenes and speckled with comedic relief.

There were implausible parts of the movie (aside from aliens invading.. Maybe) like being able to drift a 100 year old steam powered battleship but not so much that it wasn't expected in this kind of action film.

Surprisingly Rihanna's first debut into film was not terrible. Her character is a tough girl, weapons operator with more common sense then some of her fellow crewmen. She could have been a bit more animated but I'm not sure if thats the way she was trying to play her character. All in all I was expecting worse.

I'd watch the movie again if I wanted to see an action flick that you could just sit and enjoy without having to think too much about where the story was going.

Here is the battleship goldilocks featurette - Explaining what goldilocks planets are; spoiler alert!

 

Watched: 16th April 2012