'Battleship' sunk by horrendous writing and boring action

I would like to take a moment to issue a public apology to film director Michael Bay for the numerous swipes that I take at him throughout the course of my everyday life. I stand firm in my belief that he is an unprofessional and highly arrogant man that lacks the ability to tell a coherent or well acted story leading to one of the most obnoxious trilogies of films that I have seen in the last ten years. However, the fact that he never made anything nearing the level of quality of "Battleship" has forced me to reevaluate the science that goes into making something like "Transformers." I'm not saying that the "Transformers" films are good, I'm just saying that "Battleship" is an easy contender for worst movie I've seen this year or even last year for that matter.

I struggle to use the word story to describe the events of a film based on a board game with a straight face but the gist of it revolves around Taylor Kitsch, who should really be watching the scripts he's accepting with the black stains of "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" and "John Carter" on his resume, as the undisciplined, incompetent, abrasive, and generally moronic Alex Hopper, forced into joining the United States Navy by his brother Stone -played by Alexander Skarsgard- who has had it with his witless shenanigans while living on his dime.

While participating in the RIMPAC naval exercises around Hawaii, alien ships crash land and put up a barrier surrounding the islands, forcing the ships trapped inside to eliminate the threat posed to their world by the invaders that have already taken out a great chunk of the fleet trapped within.

With the commanding officers of his ship eliminated by enemy fire, Hopper is forced into the role of commander and despite its horrendous and almost cartoony opening that establishes our protagonist as a screw up or the bombardment of mediocre action choreography that the second half of the movie is to bring, it is here that the film stretches and snaps suspension of disbelief like a cheap dime store rubber band. Hopper is a moron. He can't walk away from a fight or even choose his battles properly, he's lazy, arrogant, and he doesn't even have the skills to justify his overconfidence. The movie wants you to believe that he's capable of becoming a person that can command a Destroyer crew against two alien warships that massively outgun them when, by the end of the movie, I'm not even convinced that he's capable of commanding a rowboat.

I'd harp on Kitsch's lackluster performance in the film but almost nobody comes out of this movie unscathed. The generally no name cast along with the actual retired Navy veterans lack any real chemistry with one another but are not helped by how terrible the dialogue that they are asked to deliver is. The only three people that rise to the top of this crop of awkward delivery are Tadanobu Asano, Skarsgard, and Liam Neeson.

Asano manages to deliver some of the most awkward exposition of the film used to crowbar in the mechanics of the board game with such conviction that makes what he's explaining sound almost possible. Furthermore, Skarsgard's charisma and genuine likability had me wondering throughout the films entire two hour running time why he was not cast as the protagonist and Neeson walks away with a decent enough performance by sheer virtue of being onscreen for a grand total of less than six minutes. I wish I could say the same for Rihanna's acting debut but she's given so little to actually do that there really wasn't enough to take note of.

For all the comedy that falls flat, all the terrible performances churned out and all of the lack of believability and plot holes present in the story, a big budget action movie is only as good as its actual action, an area in which "Battleship" drops the ball on even harder than its pitiful excuse for human drama. Worry sinks in from the moment the aliens make their entrance in some of the least creative alien crafts that I have ever seen in my life and only continues to spiral downhill from there once the aliens themselves make their actual debut. For as much money that went into this film's production, I've seen low budget direct-to-video releases with more creative effects and action. Only in the final 25 minutes does the film get an injection of life on the level of what the film needed desperately and by then it's too little too late. The movie's two hour running time becomes one of its own worst enemies.

I don't think that any of this film's detractors on a concept level could have predicted "Battleship" being quite as bad as it possibly is. The movie transcended simply being boring to just downright uncomfortably bad as I sat there in my seat trying to comprehend how something with such a triple A budget could be just this terrible. Not a second of action that can be found is memorable in the slightest and the pedestal that they try to put the Navy can get insulting in how cheaply patriotic it tries to feel. I have nothing but the utmost respect for the veterans shown in the film as well as our military in general but the manipulative usage of them to mask the lack of emotional substance wore on my nerves within minutes, making me wish they put half the effort the put into collaborating with the Navy into making a watchable film.

From the horrendously executed drama, to the almost insultingly lazy design of the aliens and their technology, to the boring and unimaginative action sequences, there is nothing to noteworthy to recommend about "Battleship" on a level of even browsing YouTube clips. I've seen episodes of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" making fun of B-movie schlock of the mid 20^th century that were more entertaining than a single second of this poor attempt at a board game and Navy recruitment commercial. If you're looking for spectacle with a brain, heart and soul, just rewatch "The Avengers" and hold out for one of the more promising prospect looming over the horizon this summer.

F