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Battlefield Earth film review
BATTLEFIELD EARTH
Running time: 117 mins
Starring: John Travolta, Barry Pepper, Forest Whitaker, Kim Coates, Richard Tyson
There's a new pretender to the crown in the pantheon of bad movies: a 60 million dollar science fiction epic featuring a laughably hammy Hollywood leading man, a barrage of ugly computer generated special effects, and a soundtrack which is almost as bombastic as it is painfully loud. Ladies and gentleman, please be upstanding for the cinematic aberration that is Battlefield Earth.
The year is 3000 AD. Most of humanity was wiped out a good thousand or so years ago by a vicious race of nine-foot tall aliens called Psychlos. The few remaining pockets of human resistance inhabit the treacherous mountain regions.
One such survivors and the hero of our sorry tale is Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper) who decides to venture into the remains of a nearby city to look for food and is swiftly captured by Terl (John Travolta), the Head of Psychlo Security.
Incarcerated in a holding facility with hundreds of other homo sapien, Tyler vows revenge against his gargantuan captors, and soon acquires enough military and tactical savvy to orchestrate a cunning scheme to blow up the alien homeland, using a mining assignment as a cover to gather explosives, weapons and a fleet of MIG fighter jets which just happen to be lying around.
As visions of the future go, Battlefield Earth's is certainly unique. The humans are grubby little heathens who are so desperate for food that they fight over wayward rats (yum) but - judging by their dental work - still have time and the resources to brush and floss every day. The Psychlos all sport rather fetching dreadlocks and walk as if they have chronic groin strain (a side effect of the huge platform shoes won by the actors to increase their height).
Travolta is completely miscast as Terl, acting and sounding like himself (love the New Jersey twang), right down to the fine line in smart humour (who knew that alien civilisations would be so well versed in sitcom putdowns?). Pepper meanwhile is a one-dimensional hero who has one mood - permanently bored to tears - and is not in the remotest bit likeable or sympathetic.
Corey Mandell and J David Shapiro's screenplay is light on the science and very, very heavy on the fiction. When Tyler is taken to a ruined library by Terl, he finds that the books - which by the film's timeframe have been abandoned for some 1,000 years - are all in near-perfect condition. A bit of dust maybe but the colours are still as vivid as the day they were printed and the pages haven't begun to yellow yet.
As much as I try and try, I cannot find a single element of Battlefield Earth to commend. Acting, direction and screenplay are uniformly lousy, the action sequences lack pacing, and even the running time - so often a saving grace - skirts the fringes of two hours. In the hands of director Roger Christian et al, it feels more like an eternity.
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