Review: "Battle: Los Angeles" (2011)

Jonathan Liebesman's bravely conceived yet relentlessly tedious alien invasion flick, "Battle: Los Angeles" offers a unique viewpoint on the global crisis sub-genre, following a small platoon of U.S. Marines stationed in LA. 
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It's unique in that Liebesman and screenwriter Christopher Bertolini clearly set out to make a combat/military action film rather than the usual Roland Emmerich globalized mosaic, but the effect is both refreshingly simplistic and irritatingly restrictive.
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But the film's framework is hardly the issue at hand because "Battle: Los Angeles" is a film so hopelessly self-serious and mercilessly jingoistic that it plays like a two-hour recruitment video for the Marines. 
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Filled with colorless, archetypical characters and banal, stone-faced dialogue, Bertolini's script is all about hoo-rah patriotism and duty and bravery and loyalty and it's all as delicate as a grenade launcher - complete with a snare drum taps score and one-knee'd monologues about honor and glory.
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Tired, clumsy writing can be excusable here-and-there (the first ten minutes of squad introductions are about as bad as it gets), but perhaps what's most inexcusable about "Battle: Los Angeles" is how it manages to somehow take the fun out of an alien invasion. [D-]