Battle: Los Angeles Bluray Review

Sean W. Gibson / Jul 20th, 2011 2 Comments

Battle: Los Angeles on Bluray is an action-packed blockbuster movie that comes in full high definition in this combo Bluray – DVD pack. The movie’s plot is one that we’ve seen before as an alien species drop in from outer space and invade Earth to wipe out the human population and steal our resources. The film takes the perspective of a Marine unit from Camp Pendleton in Southern California, who bravely fight the aliens in Los Angeles, manage to find the weaknesses necessary to fight back, all the while saving civilians. Battle: Los Angeles might have looked generic from the description, but the special effects were absolutely awesome and the gritty action blended with just enough storyline made this a great watch – especially for gamers.

STORY

While the plot of the movie seems done to the Nth degree, the movie doesn’t seem tiresome thanks to a relatively fast pace. Sure, we’ve seen the clichés done to death, with the old grizzled veteran with a checkered past rise up to lead once more (days before retirement) along with the dude about to get married and the baby-faced virgin all banding together to fight a seemingly undefeatable foe. But these elements of character background aren’t overdone and Aaron Eckhart does a great job playing the lead in this action movie. There’s some recognizable faces but the movie is really driven by the action as well as the element of surprise. There’s more than enough tense and exciting action scenes that come one after another to make this a really fun watch. Sure, you’re not watching some stuffy Academy award winning Euro-film, but as gamers, we’d take this title over anything like that any day of the week. While the story itself was very familiar, as were the characters, overall the story was good and hits the mark with us gamers – kill the aliens and survive (or die!). It’s funny, you’ll swear at times you’re playing through a familiar FPS game which makes us love this movie all the more since it really plays into what we love about gaming.

Audio & Video Quality

Being a new action blockbuster, Battle: Los Angeles looks amazing on a 1080p 55” LED HDTV. The colors are amazing and the special effects were done really well. The aliens and their weapons along with all the other CGI elements looked really good with the environments looking extremely realistic. These action blockbusters are perfect for gamers looking to show off their home theater system. The 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound was also pretty good rounding out what made for a great A/V experience with this Bluray movie.

Extras

The Bluray edition is packed with plenty of extras, including quite a few “making-of” like segments that were pretty interesting to watch. When it comes to extras, basically we’re looking for added value, typically with interviews from the stars, director and production staff, which is exactly what was packed on with this release.

Some of the better extras include:

Behind the Battle
Building the Aliens
Shooting the Aliens
Boot Camp
Marine Behind The Scenes

There really were a good number of extras, so if you are the kind of person that enjoys these elements with your Bluray movies, you’ll be in for a treat.

Overall

Battle: Los Angeles on BluRay is an absolute perfect pickup for us gamers that love insane action, some story and enjoy great big Hollywood special effects. The storyline was extremely familiar but didn’t detract from the film in any way and the acting was far more than adequate, doing our U.S. Marines justice. The audio and video quality was extremely well done as this will be a BluRay that you can pop in to show off your home theater to your friends. Finally, the extras were a fun watch and were worthwhile to see through at least once. If you are looking for a great gift for your action-craving gamer friend, or if you are one yourself, then Battle: Los Angeles on BluRay is a perfect purchase.