Battle L.A.

I think, for the general movie-going audience, the film delivers on the spectacle of puny humans going up against the massive threat of alien colonization of good ol' earth.  There are a lot of battle scenes, skirmishes, and close-quarter encounters at times, and the writers didn't really spend too much energy on the "why's", but just maintained a lot of focus on the action and clinging to the missions.  Aaron Eckhardt is pretty good in the film as Staff Sargent Nantz, who's been in the marines way too long, and on the way out, just as the aliens show up to blow up population centers here on earth.

But there are problems, lots of shakey-cam footage in some sequences here and there, lots of cliched military-related fox-hole sequences, the dialogue is clunky at times, but effective in other spots as well, an inordinate amount of firepower is on display that was both impressive and improbable.  It does feel like a mish-mash of other films of this genre, while embracing the style of videogame storytelling for most of the action scenes.  At times, it's an insanely concussive barrage of stand-offs between the marines and the aliens, but it doesn't really linger too long on slower human moments, so the pacing was consistent, to the point of not quite monotony, but more like "how much more can these marines take?" or "how will they get out of this jam?" 

Overall, if the trailer piqued your interest, it's worthy of a matinee to see it on the big screen.

I give it 2.5 stars, or a grade of C+.