THE EXPATRIATE

aka ERASED

(Philip Stölzl, 2012)

The Expatriate contains a scene where Aaron Eckhart's ex-black ops agent Ben Logan is pursued into a European subway station by thugs, who he takes on and beats. Its a bit like the similar scene in Joe Wright's Hanna where Eric Bana takes on some thugs in a European subway station, only nowhere near as good.
The Expatriate also contains a scene where Ben Logan evades detection by policemen and security cameras in a European train station by keeping his head down and moving cleverly. It's a bit like the similar scene in Paul Greengrass' The Bourne Ultimatum where Jason Bourne evades detection in Waterloo Station, only nowhere near as good.
Then there's the scene in The Expatriate where Logan visits a European morgue to get to the bottom of the mystery of what is happening to him. It's a bit like the similar scene where Bourne visits a European morgue in Doug Liman's The Bourne Identity, only nowhere near as good.
And what about the scene in The Expatriate where the bad guys have taken Logan's sullen teenage daughter hostage, and Logan tells one of them that if they hurt her, he's dead? Thats a bit like a similar scene in Taken where Liam Neeson tells a bad guy something similar, only nowhere near as good.
The Expatriate goes further than mere copying, in fact. It takes the Bourne films almost as a genre and lifts much of what is so distinctive about them wholesale. The cinematography, editing, captions, mood and music all feel Bourne-like, but this film lacks the smart writing and distinctive directorial vision of that series.
It's not all bad, just thoroughly moderate in almost every way. Eckhart is a decent lead, Kurelyenko has little to do but looks as beautiful as ever, and the Belgian locations are well-utilised. The story follows Eckhart's decommisioned agent ("He grew a conscience" of course!) after he is double-crossed and finds himself on the run alongside his daughter. Of course they hardly know one another, but as a hundred action films have proven, theres no better way to bond with a near-stranger than a series of intense, near-death experiences. A strange problem here is that there aren't quite enough such experiences. Occupying the middle ground between thriller and action film, The Expatriate is a little too light on the sort of action that fires the engines of the Bourne films, and works a bit too hard to make us care about the father-daughter relationship it depicts to grip the way a great thriller should.
It's a tad overlong, and if Stölzl has a good eye for handsomely steely compositions and competently directs a couple of action sequences, his feel for pacing is way off on this evidence.
In short, its a bit like a whole load of other films, only nowhere near as good.

BATTLE: LOS ANGELES

(Jonathan Liebesman, 2011)

As if it was made by some random sci-fi action blockbuster generator, there is not a single original idea in Battle: Los Angeles. It is derivative of every militaro-sci fi film since Aliens in it's gung ho lunkheadedness, utilises the by-now exhuasted shaky cam/ shallow focus/overexposed film style for it's action scenes first seen in Saving Private Ryan and done to death in a dozen films since and wants desperately to be a sort of Black Hawk Down meets Independence Day with its ground level view of a unit of stereotyped grunts facing an Alien invasion in L.A.
Aaron Eckhardt plays a gruffly heroic Staff Sergeant haunted by the loss of his men on an earlier mission who wants out of the Marine Corps but gets stuck babysitting a rookie Lieutenant direct from West Point with a pregnant wife. Other shorthand soldier-characterisations include: innocent hayseed virgin, cynical New Jersey Wiseguy, earnest Nigerian medic, competent Squad leader and a bunch of barely-differentiated Marines who get to die a little earlier. Their mission involves transporting some stranded civilians out of a blast zone so the Aliens can be wiped off the map, but along the way, of course, they discover how to beat these seemingly invincible adversaries and play a key role in winning the battle of the title.
Overlong, horribly directed - every time a gun is fired spatial incoherence becomes the norm - it plays like an enjoyable first person shooter video game stripped of it's gameplay and rendered a barely watchable action film. Eckhardt flexes his cheek muscles and does his best but the rest of the cast are lumbered with mainly expositional dialogue mixed in with some street slang trash talk, including Michelle Rodriguez in the "Michelle Rodriguez part" of the tough, non-nonsense airforce soldier who fights like a man.
The effects are impressive enough, but really, in a film like this they must be, and they in no way compensate for the right wing military fetishism generally on display here or for the lazy writing and aggressively bad direction.