Battleship

Movie Review: «Battleship».

English Title: Battleship.
Production: USA, 2012.
Release Date: 03.04.2012 (Japan).
Russian Distributor: UPI (19.04.2012).
Official Website:
Genres: Action / Adventure / Sci-Fi / Thriller / War.
Director: Peter Berg.
Starring: Liam Neeson, Taylor Kitsch, Brooklyn Decker, Rihanna.
Running Time: 131 minutes.

Unwelcomed Guests

Producer Scott Stuber, who fundraised nearly 195 mln. USD with the Safe House (2012) thriller, comes from the family of the U.S. Navy veteran and enters his second collaboration with Peter Berg since The Kingdom motion picture. Most likely he was also inspired by the passion coming from the Director towards the ocean who has been dreaming about it and the big ships since his childhood. It was the Battleship film that had allowed him to share his creative vision.

The new plot has successfully avoided many usual difficulties encountered with the adaptation of already familiar stories. The audience can welcome all the completely new characters, what is beneficial for the film, since no comparison will be made with already exisiting literary works. The story of the blockbuster makes a funny assumption of the astronauts trying to establish the contact with the inhabitants of Planet G looking quite good for humanity. However, instead of sharing the good welcome with the Earth the alien species send an assault team back as a reply. The launched party lands directly in the Pacific Ocean trying to set up a base and call for reinforcements.

The idea of such a water landing isn’t entirely new. That’s just the same way the agressors arrived to Earth as it was depicted in the last year’s Sci-Fi movie titled Battle: Los Angeles (2011), but, luckily, here you won’t meet shaky camera angles, military courage propaganda and bizarre plot turns. Rather than that Peter Berg distants himself from the old formula for such movies sticking more to the originality of the first Transformers (2007) also presented with an abundance of humor, but this time with a much reduced concentration on the future tech. The people here are fighting with their usual means not bringing any other Aliens to help them. The Transformers release set a 710 mln. USD mark in the box office figures, and we sincerely wish Battleship, which cost around 200 mln. USD to produce, to fight for the same or a higher result.

The main characters here are the people, while the secondary ones are the ships with more on that later. An inspiring international cast was brought to the project mixing various generations of actors. The foreground is presented by the young talents of Taylor Kitsch from Canada, Alexander Skarsgard from Sweden, Brooklyn Decker from the USA and singer Rihanna from Barbados. The first two in the film play the Hopper brothers. Here Alex Hopper is a young and troublesome rebel soul, while Stone Hopper possesses some Nordic temper, what allowed him to easily advance to a high rank in the Navy. He has no other choice, but to send his younger brother to the army after he was found guilty of a minor property breaching act. Alexander Skarsgard is the eldest son of the famous Swedish actor known as Stellan Skarsgard, who performed an important role in the Hollywood remake titled The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011).

Such an illegal act was carried out by Alex Hopper in the Battleship film because he fell for the girl, who happened to be the beautiful daughter of the Vice Admiral Shane brilliantly portrayed by Liam Neeson. Any VIP-roles would suit his experience the best providing a natural and confident acting style. His daughter Sam Shane is played by the young American model named Brooklyn Decker. She is 24 years old, and the modeling business is not always the easiest foundation for the acting career, though it happens occasionally. For Brooklyn acting background started from a second plan role in the comedy titled Just Go with It (2011). Later on this year her new movie known as What to Expect, When You’re Expecting (2012) will be released.

All the New Faces

Read on further about the story ideas brought by Battleship.