Battleship DVD Review: Enjoyable Visuals And Action Sequences

Battleship Review: Enjoyable Visuals and Action Sequences
Bluray, DVD, Digital Copy
Release: August 28th, 2012

Battleship is a visually pleasing action sci-fi movie that stars Liam Neeson, Taylor Kitsch, Rihanna, Alexander Skarsgard and Brooklyn Decker.

The story begins with two brothers – one who is in the Navy (Stone Hopper) and the other who can’t figure out his life (Alex Hopper). After another reckless event by Alex, his brother Stone demands that he join the Navy. Meanwhile, there has been a discovery of a planet that is similar to earth and there have been efforts made to establish deep space communication with that planet. However, the only apparent outcome of that deep space signal is to lure to our planet a hostile alien force with quite the impressive arsenal.

Other than the opening 15 minutes of the movie, we never learn much about the characters; they simply give us a cursory background and then run straight to the action. Because of this, each character is fairly uninteresting and bland which makes it difficult to connect to any of the characters throughout the movie. It keeps the main focus on the aliens, but we never end up hearing much detail on them either. I would have loved to learn more about them (the brothers, the aliens or both?) prior to battle and afterwards, though there are certainly some very interesting and key situations during the movie. The one thing you need to remember is that this is a game of Battleship – so expect it to be entirely focused on battle. The only strength of this movie is the battle at hand, and it does a good job of displaying and executing those battle sequences. I really enjoyed the weaponry that the enemy possessed as well and it made for some interesting scenes.

The overall story of Battleship is average, not well detailed as you get into a situation and then battle it out. There wasn’t a really strong character, even though the movie focuses mostly on Alex Hopper. It shows his progression as a person, but that doesn’t come across that well thanks to no real character building – it tries, but doesn’t do a good enough job. Also, I would love to have seen more of Liam Neeson’s character in this movie. I liked his portrayal of the Admiral, which seemed to be a strong character, but I wouldn’t know since he didn’t appear in enough scenes – very disappointing.

Even with enjoyable visuals and action sequences, Battleship still ends up being just average for a blockbuster movie. It passes as a good entertaining action flick with an intriguing enemy and it’s certainly enjoyable to watch if you like an action sci-fi movie. So grab your popcorn and enjoy two hours of wonderful visual effects as it does its job to entertain you.

Blu-ray Exclusives + Special Features
• Alternate Ending Pre-visualization with commentary by filmmaker Peter Berg
• The Visual Effects of Battleship
• All Access with Director Peter Berg
• USS Missouri VIP Tour
• Commander Pete
• Universal’s Second Screen
• Preparing For Battle
• All Hands on Deck: The Cast
• Engage in Battle

The special features included in the Blu-ray are fantastic and really complement the movie well. I especially enjoyed the USS Missouri VIP Tour that took you through the ship and gave you a bit of a history lesson. The rest of the features are also well worth checking out giving further detail on the ships and the filming process of the movie – very enjoyable! It is certainly a Blu-ray disc to own for any fan of the movie and for those who enjoy great bonus content.

Grade: B-
Review By: Andrew Stevens

Responses

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  1. I thought that this movie was really fun and entertaining. Like you were saying, the story was a little underdeveloped, but is that really what anyone came to a movie based off of a board game for? I skipped this movie in theaters, but decided to rent it after a coworker at Dish recommended it as having better action than Transformers. I put it on my Blockbuster @Home queue online, and it came in the mail yesterday. The Blu-Ray produced the most amazing picture and sound I have ever had come out of my home theater. I love being able to rent Blu-Rays to test them before buying them, because some are just overpriced DVD’s.