This movie is about an alien invasion that creates a bubble with three naval vessels (two American and one Japanese) and a few nasty aliens inside. The fight lasts an arbitrarily long time, especially since these aliens bear a striking resemblance to Transformers from the movie that... had the same creator. Odd that.
Liam Neeson seems like he was just a name to slap on the movie, as he has about two days worth of work in this thing. He plays the aloof Admiral who gets cut out of the fight early and yells impotently at bureaucrats and the cruel fates who have locked him out of what is clearly the greatest fight the planet has ever known - if they had any idea what was going on inside the bubble the aliens create pretty early on.
The tactics used by the humans wouldn't even have fooled other humans, let alone this Klingon-esque warrior space race who apparently go from planet to planet, destroying everything for simply the fun of it. It seems an odd thing for a race capable of faster-than-light travel to be so warlike and destructive with no idea of:
- Avoiding space debris
- Attacking from orbit
- Air attacks
- Beam weapons
- Ship-level shields (even though the can create very, very large energy shields)
- Shock and Awe
- First strike
- Using your best weapon right off the bat
- Personal ranged weapons
- Not ignoring indigenous personnel simply because they don't seem to be armed
Fortunately for our heroes, the aliens are impressively advanced and incredibly stupid at the same time. The movie can be summarized as a good popcorn movie to just sit back and not think about. At all. Really.
Cinematography was excellent.
Special effects are also very good (if recycled)
Acting is pretty good (even Rihanna, who does not sing the umbrella song)
Storyline is unimaginative, but perfectly fine.
Dialogue is better than expected.
3.75/5