Battleship is a film that I dismissed when I first watched it. I’d listened to a lot of people basically saying it was a bad film so when I watched it I only saw the negatives, but it’s been a movie that has kept popping into my mind from time to time and I knew I needed to watch it again. So when I saw it on offer at my local HMV I grabbed it.

The basic story is a screwball guy is forced to take responsibility and joins the U.S. Navy where his brother is a commanding officer of a Destroyer. While out on a joint international war games near Hawaii aliens come down, engulf a huge area in a big bubble and try to phone home. There are only three navy ships in this bubble and they have to fight the aliens and try to stop them phoning home.

That’s the gist of it, what annoys me is the daft Hollywood stuff in the film, mainly the screw up who has to step up and be the man he needs to be. There is also a scene where the protagonist has his face grabbed by an alien and has a psychic experience where he sees what the aliens are planning, I’ve seen this done a few times in movies now and aside from Pacific Rim it just feels like a cheat. The characters in the film need to know this is a hostile race of aliens and they will kill us all etc. They did this in Independence Day and I’d like to see some more thought put into how the aliens motives are revealed. I do wonder if it’s done to save time though, studios want movies to be a certain length so maybe that’s the reason. In Pacific Rim it was part of the story line and I liked how they done it.

There are some bits which you’d expect to see in a Hollywood movie which are not in there. We have the singer Rihanna and the model and actress Brooklyn Decker in this movie and at no time do I remember either having to wear something that is just there to get some flesh on show, this I applaud the makers for. Rihanna is kitted out in navy gear throughout the film and Decker is wearing shorts and a vest top. Neither are sexualised just for the sake of it and they are more characters then eye candy.

Taylor Kitsch is quite likable as Alex Hopper, our protagonist and seems to bounce off of Tadanobu Asano very well. Their two characters have a hostile beginning to the movie. I found Kitsch quite believable in the role and he didn’t seem scared to make himself look a fool.

I would have liked to of seen more of the aliens in the movie. We only really seem them from a human point of view, which is okay but the writer inside of me is keen to know more about them. Their technology is better then that of mankind’s but not to the point where they severely dominate the battle.

There is a lot of CGI in Battleship but it  looks very well done, I can’t recall any time in the movie where I was pulled out of it because of the CGI.

Overall on a second viewing I did really enjoy Battleship. Yes there are some clichés in it but it was a fun film to watch. Visually it was beautiful, the characters are pretty straightforward and the storyline is a little on the direct side but I didn’t find that a negative here. The Director, Peter Berg put together a very nice and tidy film that is entertaining, funny and easy to watch.