Battle: Los Angeles 2011

Jake Coyle, Associated Press: Disaster films will really get interesting when they start running out of iconic skylines to destroy. How about "Battle: Wichita" or "Deep Impact: Albany"? Read more

Glenn Kenny, MSN Movies: ..the real problem with this picture, shaky-cam visuals aside... is its insistent, talky, unnecessary earnestness, which adds a good fifteen minutes of flab to the picture... Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: As it lurches from Act II to Act III, "Battle: Loss Angeles" reveals itself to be a lousy movie. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: Battle: Los Angeles draws entirely on cliches ... And they're all shouted at top volume. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: As it stands, Battle: Los Angeles is good dumb fun. A little less talking and a little weirder alien and it might have been something more. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: A loud, frenetic, viscerally gripping two-hour tour of duty that mostly plays fair by the rules of the genre and mostly avoids macho posturing. Read more

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Reader: Terminally stupid. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: This jacked-up B-movie hybrid of "Black Hawk Down" and "War of the Worlds" is a modest but crafty triumph of tension over good sense and cliche. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: With his hawklike profile and square jaw, the hyperstalwart Eckhart looks like a comic-book hero and acts like one, too. He's so stalwart he creaks. Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: Like an angry tenant bent on revenge, the movie industry has depicted the destruction of Los Angeles with staggering consistency if not a wealth of imagination. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: This film feels so much like a videogame your hands keep reaching for controllers -- shoot the aliens, shoot the aliens, shoot the aliens. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Battle: Los Angeles is so inept it's exhausting. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter: The deadening and sometimes laughable litany of shouted military-style dialogue eventually pummels into submission any hope for fresh creative angles on this well-worn format. Read more

Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: You can't help but wish there had been a lot more heart in this Marine's story. Read more

Connie Ogle, Miami Herald: A solid popcorn movie, with plenty of action, explosions and low-key mayhem unlikely to scar even the most fragile of psyches. Read more

Anthony Lane, New Yorker: If the talk had been surgically removed, leaving only the sights and sounds of combat, this could have been a striking, semiabstract display of aggressive energy; as it is, any viewer over twelve will go for the laughs. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Excitement? Not so much. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: When the mothership finally arrives, it's a clinking, clanking, clattering collection of metallic parts, as if Fred Sanford's junkyard suddenly became airborne. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: This silly extraterrestrial-invasion epic somehow manages the feat of making the destruction of La La Land seem tedious. Read more

Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer: As a narrative, the cartoonish Battle: Los Angeles makes the cartoonish Independence Day look as nuanced as Saving Private Ryan. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: It might be different with well-developed characters or a story that offers more depth or breadth, but the movie is predominantly pyrotechnics and, as impressive as some of those are, they don't warrant two hours worth of screen time. Read more

Richard Roeper, Richard Roeper.com: It's like watching other people play a video game Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Here's a science-fiction film that's an insult to the words "science" and "fiction," and the hyphen in between them. You want to cut it up to clean under your fingernails. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: A movie that made me wish, from the first to the last of its 116 minutes (forewarned is forearmed!), that I were at home watching Paul Verhoeven's "Starship Troopers" again instead. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: Eckhart's commitment to the movie's reality, which is as fierce as the sergeant's commitment to his men, takes what otherwise might merely have been outlandish and makes it believable, and frightening. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: The film, constructed by people of serious talent, is designed to put you through the wringer, and that's exactly what it does. This is a total war scenario, people. Man up or stand back. Hoo-rah! Read more

Kevin C. Johnson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: [It] isn't nearly as good as any of the movies that may have inspired it, or even its own knockout trailer. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: Don't mean to boast, but I can suspend my disbelief as willingly as any credulous moviegoer. Yet not even an industrial crane would have helped here. Nope, Battle: Los Angeles completely defeated me. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: Me, I would rather have enjoyed a big breakfast. Read more

Nigel Floyd, Time Out: The weak link is Christopher Bertolini's script, which lumbers the flat military characters with hackneyed dialogue and corny sentimentality. Not even Eckhart can survive such banality, and kick-ass specialist Michelle Rodriguez is wasted. Read more

Scott Bowles, USA Today: Battle takes its fight so seriously that it's hard to get behind the mission. Read more

Brian Lowry, Variety: Mostly, this is the cinematic equivalent of a first-person shooter game, one where the Marines possess only slightly more personality than the faceless invaders. Read more

Nick Schager, Village Voice: Not a single arresting image is found amid the sci-fi rubble, though unintentional laughs eventually arrive. Read more

Mark Jenkins, Washington Post: H.G. Wells did it better. This movie spends so much yawn-inducing time on variations of the same combat scenario that its final showdown feels rushed. Read more