I was happily surprised when I went to see this film. Ever since I saw the first trailer, I was expecting some horrible Independence Day knock-off, but this film was a much better time than I had anticipated for a March premier.
The premise is rather simple; we follow a bunch of marines as they try to get themselves and a group of civilians out of LA in the middle of a global alien invasion. This is where the movie really gets it right though, because it is about the marines and not the aliens. We learn very little about the aliens and their plans, just enough to move the plot along. The aliens are not the stars of this movie and I think that is what separates this from other alien invasion movies. The plot could have gone almost exactly the same had the invaders been from some foreign country. The idea of aliens with weird space age weaponry instills an extra sense of danger, but this film does not feel like it was directed at hardcore sci-fi fans it is a war movie first and a sci-fi movie second.
This film also has something that I had almost forgotten you could do in action movies. It has developed characters. One of the marines is getting married prior to the invasion and another is in the marines to become a doctor. The protagonist is an old marine with a dark past that was just one day from retirement (I know how it sounds, but it actually works). Each of the marines is more than just a soldier and the movie actually takes the time to make us care enough about them that when one dies it means something. This is the story of the marines, not the invasion of earth. We do not see anything that happens outside of LA and at the end of the film, though the marines score a small victory for the human race, the invaders are not defeated and in fact, it still looks like the human race is kind of screwed. This movie was not perfect, but it was a great deviation from what I have come to expect with Hollywood action films. 3.5/5
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