Battleship

Ratings: 8.8/10
Film Class: A
Genre: Sci-Fi Action Thriller

Had my reservations, because of the trailer hype, unattractive poster and ordinarily uncreative movie title. I can't fault the director for the movie title because it's based on the classic guessing naval game about ship placement which I played when I was younger (now there's even an iphone game app on it). The trailer hype which was created since around mid last year (I think?) created too much "unnecessary" waiting. And I really thought they should have put more effort into coming up with a much cooler poster design. 

Anyways, if you don't already know, Battleship is also from Hasbro, the multinational toy and board game company from the US which brought you Transformers. I don't see the "link" in its publicity, but from the way the movie turned out, there were loads of transformer-like CG in it... in a word, AWESOME. 

Battleship has a bit of everything, I'm not referring to the genres, but more on reminiscence of other well-known films. *spoilers ahead* To sum it up in a sentence, Battleship is "Transformers" CG meets "Independence Day" Alien Storyline-ness, a tad of sinking "Titanic" and a hint of TV ad "Starship Troopers", and finally, new school meets old school "Wild Hogs" versus "GI Joe" aliens.

While there might have been a few scenes of "discontinuity" (created a bumpy plot progression), especially the one where the Battleship Missouri was reintroduced and given its 20 minutes of fame, and somewhat "off" humor lines every now and then, I was really impressed with the overall movie experience.

There's character development, character engagement (not so much the lead but his bro), and you even get to see lots of human-like extra-terrestrials, something most alien movies do not feature much of. I expected epicness, and the CG brought out just that... with a hot babe and my favourite Hollywood star Liam Neeson, the director really knows how to please a guy, much so for a male movie buff.

A guy-ish movie, for a guy-ish audience. There's principles of art of war, there's "original battleship-like" attacks and there's non-stop CG action which would awe all ages. Battleship is definitely a movie I'm going to keep in my Blue-Ray Library for years to come...