This movie is just what its trailer promises - loud, macho, visually explosive - and to its credit doesn't pretend to be anything more.
Head along to Battle: Los Angeles not expecting Oscar-worthy turns, Scorsese-style auteur genius or the rich wit of a Coen brothers screenplay, and you'll be able to
appreciate it for what it is - essentially a marriage of Black Hawk Down and War of the Worlds.
The hero duties fall upon the versatile Aaron Eckhart, whose grunting jarhead Staff Sergeant Nantz is just about to close his storied United States Marine Corps service record when, wouldn't he know it, a mass alien invasion delays retirement.
The invasion is first thought to be an innocent meteor shower (here's your War of the Worlds) until alien soldiers begin laying waste to the world, turning LA into a modern-day Stalingrad.
Nantz, with his platoon of resentful but unshakably proud Marines are thrown into the thick of it to evacuate civilians before an air strike blows Santa Monica off the map.
The first contact with the invaders gives way to an hour and a half of all-out combat, with glorious bits of tough-guy dialogue and textbook cliches in between action sequences shot in the now-standard shaky hand-held camera style (and here's your Black Hawk Down).
The CGI, however, is absolutely searing and the wonderfully conceived alien soldiers along with their frightful firepower bring to mind District 9 or the Terminator trilogy.
An archetypical war movie to the last, Battle: Los Angeles climaxes in a Saving Private Ryan style stand that trumpets the redoubtable ooh-rah image of the US Marine - a veiled recruitment drive, perhaps?
If it's achieved its aim, this movie will leave you a little battle-worn but ultimately happy you got the loud, macho and visually explosive movie you came to see.
3/5, 116 minutes
