This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Based on the Hasbro game Battleship
Plot Overview
In the Puka Wai dive in O'Ahu,
Hawaii, it's nearing the midnight hour. “Birthday
boy” Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) is three sheets to the wind.
He's about to turn twenty-six with not much to show for it. His
older brother Stone (Alexander Skarsgård) on whom
he mooches has brought him a candled cupcake for him to make
a wish on—hopefully for a job—and tells him not to
waste it on the long-legged blonde Samantha Shane (Brooklyn Decker)
who just walked in the door. But it's his wish (“I'm going
in.”) The hungry babe wants a chicken burrito, but the
kitchen has just closed. Alex promises to get her one post haste
and breaks into the also just closed Mini-Mart down the way. He
delivers it as he's being cuffed by the cops.
Time goes by. Sam's
father Fleet Commander Admiral Terrance Shane (Liam Neeson)
figures, “What my daughter sees in you is a great mystery to
me. You're a very smart individual, with very weak character,
leadership and decision-making skills.” The opening
scene showed he lacked temperance, that is moderation in all
things. He was either loafing his life away, or exerting too much
effort in the wrong direction. Should have followed his brother's
lead for a job in construction. Temperance is a lesson well
acquired in childhood as from the Children's Hour Series, as
told by Carolyn Bailey:
So Sir Guyon, who is known as the Fairy Queen's Knight of Temperance, brought to a successful finish his great adventure, helped by the pilgrim, his servant, whose real name for all time has been Conscience. (211–12)
In six short years Alex had joined the Navy and is a
lieutenant aboard the Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS John Paul
Jones on RIMPAC exercises off Hawaii. A five four
bogie alien invasion force sets up nearby armed the way the cops
were in the opening. The police can turn on their bubble gum
machine to keep interference at bay, and the aliens employ a
force field dome that isolates them from the fleet … except
for three ships that get caught inside. The police have bullets
& taser, and the aliens have shells & smart wrecking balls.
The shells emerge from holsters on the side of the ship, and the
wreckers have lines that can snake out and bite anything they
miss. Both cops and aliens have loud noise makers & bright
lights. The cops have night sticks and the aliens clubs &
knives. The aliens have no wheeled vehicles, however, being
evidently from a water world.
In the ensuing battle, two
of our ships get sunk, and the John Paul Jones is damaged. Both the
CO and XO are killed leaving Alex the
Tactical Action Officer next in the line of command. A measured
response is needed. First, he freezes and does nothing though his
men are awaiting orders. Then with all weapons being down, he
overreacts and sets the ship on a fool's errand to ram the
aliens—they're not going to let that happen. Finally, at the
urging of crew mates and prompting of conscience, he swerves aside
to pick up “sailors in the water.”
Ideology
The apostle Paul compared Christian
life to a sporting event; (1Cor. 9:24-25) “Know ye not that
they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So
run, that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for the
mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a
corruptible crown; but we an
incorruptible.” In our movie there's a soccer
game before the naval exercises. The Japanese lead by a point with
one minute left. Captain Yugi Nagata (Tadanobu Asano) fouls team
leader Alex with a brutal head kick leaving him dazed. The Americans are
awarded a penalty kick, but instead of letting his team mate take it, the
wise and temperate course, a concussed Alex decides to do it himself
and finish off the game. He misses by a country mile (“His
stubbornness cost the United States.”)
Come a real naval battle and radar is jammed for both sides. Nobody can select a target until sunrise. A rescued Nagata confesses to Alex that the Japanese have an alternate means to track vessels near Hawaii using the network of tsunami caution buoys to register water displacement of ships passing near them. Here a wiser Alex cedes control to the Japanese (“My chair is your chair, sir”) to work his magic.
Production Values
“” (2012) was directed by Peter Berg. It was written by Jon Hoeber and Erich Hoeber. It stars Taylor Kitsch, Alexander Skarsgård, Brooklyn Decker and Liam Neeson. Neeson was good as always, and Kitsch gave a surprisingly good performance in his major role. An underutilized Decker as the lead's love conveyed her changing emotions with aplomb: from a put-upon bar girl, to a sailor's groupie, to a daddy's girl, to a worried broad, to a good driver in some land-based action. Singer Rihanna playing a petty officer did the Navy proud. A lot of the secondary actors were second rate.
The movie is rated PG–13. There's lots of
scary action, a little bit of kissing, and a surprising lack of
swearing except for some old salts on the battleship Missouri
who got in on the last hurrah. It had great special effects and a
wonderful music score. Runtime is 2 hours 11 minutes.
There's a bona fide extra scene that runs after the end credits.
An invasion takes
planning, but this one went off half-cocked. It's as Bruno Brehm
wrote, “The world wasn't made in a day! … Nothing
succeeds at the first attempt; everything must first be
considered and tested properly” (79). The aliens arrived but
six years after earth's ill-advised Project Beacon sent an alert to
our presence. They didn't know about our crowded near earth
satellites to avoid them. They were likely slavers in need of
workers in their floating gardens where the home inhabitants
couldn't work on account of their sensitivity to sunlight. Their
curiosity about grazing horses indicates they were unfamiliar with
beasts of burden. Their technology was in serious need of upgrade,
except their metallurgy was advanced. My guess is they
specialized in vulnerable planets, easy pickings. After a flop here
they might just decide to ignore us.
They were especially careful not to target non-combatants. They had an advanced ethic in this regard. They retrieved their wounded. In the final add-on scene when one of them is discovered after the hostilities have ceased, my thought is that if the rednecks who found him (it) don't live up to the spacers' advanced ethic, it could mean a lot of trouble coming our way. Just saying.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
This PG–13 movie is eminently
suitable for the discussion of temperance, but I would add one
caution. Note the cluster of empty beer bottles in the opening
scene. In the era of Prohibition it was common to speak of
temperance regarding alcohol consumption only, rather than broadly
as the Bible does when it's mentioned. So as not to confuse readers,
modern Bible translators have substituted self-control
for temperance. In this movie,
however, practicing temperance would have meant sitting out
the last soccer play, not using self-control to manage the shot. We
see him psyching himself up to take it, saying “Engage.
Impose will.” Temperance is the correct term well
within the potential vocabulary of even a grade schooler as seen in
Bailey whom I quoted. Self-control as a substitute would
be a malapropism.
This is a great action story with sympathetic characters and real-looking sets. The veterans who manned the Mighty Mo were the real deal, some of them.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Edge of your seat action-packed thrills. Suitability for Children: Suitable for children 13+ years with guidance. Special effects: Well done special effects. Video Occasion: Good for Groups. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall movie rating: Three and a half stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software.
Bailey, Carolyn Sherwin. “Sir Guyon's Great Adventure.” Adapted from Spenser's “Fairy Queen.” Stories of Great Adventures. Copyright, 1919, by Milton Bradley Company. Springfield, Mass.: Milton Bradley Company. Print.
Brehm, Bruno. They Call It Patriotism. Translated from the German of Apis Und Este. Copyright, 1932 by Little, Brown and Co. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1932. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org