Not the best sci-fi flick I've seen, not the worst. The movie starts with a rockin' song & moves quickly to the action; lots of smoke, gunfire, perturbed Marines, darting shapes & weird sounds (which strongly reminded me of the velociraptor sounds from Jurassic Park). It had me glued to the screen, jumping at every sound & invested in the happenings.
The middle section of the movie dealing with a character's lingering death & his plea to save his orphaned son has been done over and over and over again in other films & I'm tired of those schmaltzy attempts by the director to tug at our heart strings. I'm also familiar with the "I'll stay behind & set off the bombs so the rest can live" martyrdom shtick (Armageddon, anyone? Aliens, anyone?). Maybe I was getting battle-weary.
The final third of the film again had me pulling for the survivors to finally get the hell outta there. Jeff Goldblum figures out that if they can disable the mothership, this will ultimately aid in the defeat of the extraterrestrials, so he & Will Smith take off from Area 51 in an alien spacecraft...oh, wait, that was Independence Day. OK, so our Marines figure out something similar, and are then led by the tortured and misunderstood staff sergeant (who earlier had bared his soul to his platoon, and won their loyalty forever; I, myself, would probably have been worried about getting out alive & trying to rest after such a hellacious day, but that would be too realistic & boring) to carry out a similar strategy. All ends well for the few Marines & civilians not already picked off. We Americans have once again singlehandedly (!!) figured out the secret to alien destruction & proceed to tell the REST OF THE WORLD, who are unable to figure this out without us. Yay, us.
Did the movie keep my attention? Yes. Was I entertained? Yes. Was it realistic? Probably not.
The middle section of the movie dealing with a character's lingering death & his plea to save his orphaned son has been done over and over and over again in other films & I'm tired of those schmaltzy attempts by the director to tug at our heart strings. I'm also familiar with the "I'll stay behind & set off the bombs so the rest can live" martyrdom shtick (Armageddon, anyone? Aliens, anyone?). Maybe I was getting battle-weary.
The final third of the film again had me pulling for the survivors to finally get the hell outta there. Jeff Goldblum figures out that if they can disable the mothership, this will ultimately aid in the defeat of the extraterrestrials, so he & Will Smith take off from Area 51 in an alien spacecraft...oh, wait, that was Independence Day. OK, so our Marines figure out something similar, and are then led by the tortured and misunderstood staff sergeant (who earlier had bared his soul to his platoon, and won their loyalty forever; I, myself, would probably have been worried about getting out alive & trying to rest after such a hellacious day, but that would be too realistic & boring) to carry out a similar strategy. All ends well for the few Marines & civilians not already picked off. We Americans have once again singlehandedly (!!) figured out the secret to alien destruction & proceed to tell the REST OF THE WORLD, who are unable to figure this out without us. Yay, us.
Did the movie keep my attention? Yes. Was I entertained? Yes. Was it realistic? Probably not.