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By Maggie Scott

The latest cinematic sow’s ear Hollywood hoped to make into a silk purse (although its first weekend box office “purse” was a healthy $22 million), is actor-turned-director, Peter Berg’s screechingly smashaholic sci-fi thriller, Battleship.

Its release is timed to add to Memorial Day festivities and observances. It contains a climactic kicker involving Greatest Generation “Old Salts” proving they still have “the right stuff” that is guaranteed to moisten eyes that have already spent two hours in excited dilation observing the hit-‘em-with-everything-‘ya-got barrage of CGI action between the vessels of the United States Navy and the vanguard ships of an alien invasion.

Thinly disguised as a recruiting film, Battleship features “real deal” naval crews and vessels; and the theatre featured a pre-movie ad for the Navy which intoned how this branch of the armed forces is a “global force for good.”  In fact, ultimately, all of the other branches will have some presence in Battleship: the Air Force pounds the invaders with its lethal fighter jets; a Marine base suffers a Pearl Harbor-style (the film is set in Hawaii) attack; and the Army is commandingly represented by the on-screen work of real-life Iraq combat vet, Gregory D. Gadson, as Mick Canales. He’s  a double amputee, who will literally go metal prosthetic toe-to-not-in-the-periodic table-metal toe with the aliens.

NASA’s Beacon Project search for intelligent life in the universe turns up a “Goldilocks” planet dubbed Planet G and sets off the threat of an “extinction level event.”  At the same time as the naval forces of several nations have converged in the waters off Oahu for the annual RIMPAC “war games,” vessels from Planet G arrive; one of which takes out some high-rise Hong Kong real estate, while others take up menacing residence in the waters right in front of the U.S. Destroyer John Paul Jones.

This is the battleship upon which is serving our story’s hero—26-year-old Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch).  Alex is on board thanks to his career Navy officer brother, Stone (Alexander Skarsgard), who ordered the ner-do-well Alex to ship out to shape up.  But his service so far has been less than stellar, with an attitude adjustment still to be achieved.  He’s just been warned by the Admiral father (Liam Neeson) of his lady love, Samantha (Brooklyn Decker), that he could be kicked out of the Navy after RIMPAC.  Luckily for the world, the aliens help Alex realize the potential Stone always saw in him.  It’s swiftly and tragically determined that this is not the North Koreans fooling with them, when Stone’s Destroyer is obliterated and the death of the officers of the John Paul Jones puts the stunned and grieving Alex in command.

At first, Alex is almost overwhelmed by his “bad feeling like we’re gonna need a new planet kind of feeling.”  But, he and his intrepid band of survivors, that include Cora, a feisty communications officer played by R&B diva, Rihanna, and Captain Nagata (Tadanobu Asano), Alex’s soccer game rival from a RIMPAC competing Japanese vessel (the irony of which, remembering World War II history, is hard to shake off), refuse to be sunk— even when their ship is taken out by the aliens’ vicious buzz saw weapons and ammo that hit the Destroyer.

Helping Alex, et al, “buy the world another day” are Sam and Mick, who are playing hide and seek with the aliens at the mountain top, where the Beacon Project space signal transmitters are located, with cowering oversight by equipment tech, Cal Zapata (Hamish Linklater).  In addition to just staying alive, Alex is responsible for destroying those transmitters—and he’s going to need some big guns, like the kind on the floating “museum,” the venerated Battleship “Might Mo” (Missouri).  All the veterans who once proudly sailed aboard her, and now serve as tour guides, have to ask is, “What do you need, son?” to the grateful Alex, and the survivors are “ready to play with the big boys” to “drop some lead” on the mother of all enemies’ mother ship.

Although roundly trounced by the critics, and too long by at least 30 minutes (should have cut out the sequences where the buzz saws menace the Little League team and take out a freeway), Battleship scores a direct hit with its special effects and low-key, but still potent, patriotic pitch.  As a nearly-perfect popcorn movie, you could say it’s almost worthy of a twenty-one gun salute.   Rated PG-13 for violence, language.