Battle: .. Whereever...

The basic premise of this movie is "what if we had to have Americans fight on their home soil?" From there, the rest of the movie is an exercise in excusing this. You can imagine the conversation at the production level:
"Can we have the Nazis invade?"
"No-one takes them seriously any more since Inglorious Bastards. And besides, we want to be modern day."
"So, Iranian invasion? Canadian?"
"Really? Given America's over the top reaction to anyone who looks at them cross-eyed, you'd think anyone would take any earthly threat seriously?"
"In that case... let's go with aliens!"
"Oooh... be careful, we need to make sure there's no danger of portraying the aliens in any way that could be construed as sympathetic, or even slightly human. We don't want anyone to question that we should be mercilessly slaughtering them, while at the same time showing us to be extremely compassionate to our fellow Americans (and we can score bonus points if the people who are actually in danger and we are compassionate to are not actually Americans but are, say... Mexican)."
"Good point. And we need to make sure we can get a video game out of this."
"Already ready to ship..."

Yeah, let's not pretend. This isn't science fiction. (Although I bet the producers are glad of the opportunity to get cash from those that think it is.) Russians, Arabs, Aliens, just a different enemy, but this is pure jingoism from start to finish. "America is great, gawddammit, and I'll shoot you in the face if you disagree."

There's the usual collection of characters, the disgruntled veteran, the guy about to get married, the token women soldier (played by Michelle Rodriguez, surprise, surprise), the kids to protect... you name it, they've got it.

And the storyline is... well, let's face it, you could not be paying the slightest bit of attention and still know what is going on.

Only worth seeing if you think District 9 or Skyline didn't have enough shooting in it...

[END]