BATTLESHIP: Hit. Miss. Hit.

There are those who will shrug off Battleship as ridiculous because it's based on a board game.  I will remind them that good movies have been based on flimsier premises.  Val Lewton commissioned a series of horror films in the 1940s with only titles, and depended on real filmmakers to fill in the rest; we ended up with the heartfelt (and Bronte-based) I Walked with a Zombie, the chilling Cat People, and the clever The Body Snatcher.  At a time when the movie business is almost completely premise-based, it's good to see one with only the most minuscule of selling points which depends on good directing, good acting, and good writing to succeed.

Much of what makes Battleship surprisingly entertaining is that it has a real director: Peter Berg, not a graduate of commercials or a Michael Bay clone but a good filmmaker, a former actor who has made real films (Friday Night Lights) as well as rousing action-adventures (The Rundown).  Berg doesn't take his paycheck and leave, but delivers.

The battle in question is between the U.S. Navy and aliens.  Following a signal sent into space five years earlier, several alien warships from a similar planet travel to earth to put the flag in.  "This could be like Columbus and the Indians... except we're the Indians," says the astronomer Cal (Hamish Linklater), paraphrasing the hypothesis expressed more eloquently by Stephen Hawking (and earlier by Jake Johannsen).  They put up a forcefield around the Hawaiian islands and set themselves up to send a signal to the rest of the warships to come.  Humanity's only hope is a set of ships inside the forcefield that may be able to take them down.  There's your gameboard right there.

The battle scenes are effective.  Unlike the Transformers movies, which Battleship will inevitably be lumped in with, we are always sure what's going on where.  And the movie actually incorporates the hit-miss grid of the board game in a way that is not stupid or forced, but actually seems kind of plausible.

It also helps that there are human beings behind the battleships.  Though the story strictly follows formula, the performances are good and the characters believable.  Taylor Kitsch plays Alex Hopper, a former layabout who was pressured by his straight-arrow brother Stone (Alexander Skarsgard) to join him in the Navy.  Alex proves to be a capable soldier but still a stubborn pighead, and it doesn't help that he's in love with Samantha (Brooklyn Decker), the daughter of his commanding officer (Liam Neeson).  The human story is predictable but still helps give a backbone to all of the action, and a very funny prologue involving a bar, a convenience store, and a burrito acquaints us with the characters quite well.

Kitsch's performance does not display a great range, but he's a likable lead.  Tadanobu Asano is also very good as a Japanese soldier who feuds with Alex, paving the way for the two to grudgingly make nice when the aliens touch down, and later to damn well respect each other. (I had to check to be sure that this was the same Asano who played the amoral blond-haired slit-mouthed maniac in Ichi the Killer.  He seems far too nice to be the same person, but he is.)  Though featured prominently in trailers, Neeson is barely in the film.  This is a relief; between fighting off a pack of wolves in The Grey and bludgeoning dozens of henchmen singlehandedly in Taken 2, he needs a rest.  Of Rihanna's performance, the best to be said is that it will not likely harm her music career.

The writing is where the movie comes up short.  The script by Jon and Eric Hoeber, who wrote the dismal RED, is consistently funny but weak in plot.  The aliens are refreshingly humanlike (as would be expected on an earthlike planet), but it's never quite clear why the aliens do what they do.  For instance, why do they send machines out to commit mass destruction but will not personally harm another creature?  On several occasions one of them will look a person in the eye and leave them unharmed; meanwhile, they cause car crashes, destroy bridges, and hurl missiles on a whim.  What's their logic?

One of the key pieces of machinery the aliens possess is a ball of rotating blades which they send around to destroy ships and large structures.  It's an interesting invention, but it renders much of the hit-and-miss missile-firing action pointless.  They may have just used their death spheres to begin with and saved the trouble.

The land-bound sub-plot involving Samantha, Cal the astronomer, and a depressed disabled veteran (Gregory D. Gadson) who's getting used to his titanium legs doesn't contribute much to the story.  It proves itself worthy by introducing us to Gadson, who really is an Iraq war veteran and really did lose his legs.  But never mind that; he has a commanding screen presence.  This is his first movie and will not be his last.

Of course, Battleship comes complete with an undying and unquestioning reverence for the U.S. Armed Forces, and why shouldn't it?  A movie based on a toy isn't equipped to be nuanced.  But Berg and his writers find a way to avoid pandering, in a climactic battle sequence that pays tribute to the Navy in a clever and unexpected way.

Though Battleship is far from an airtight action film, I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised.  Occasionally a movie with only the most limited ambitions can be more satisfying than a movie that sets the highest bar and fails to reach it (Prometheus, that's you).  Though Berg and the screenwriters leave quite a few holes in their struggle to fill in the gaps of a plotless, characterless game, they have made a real movie out of it.  I was happier walking out of Battleship than I was going in, and that's enough.

** 1/2 out of ****

NOTE: I was warned that there was one scene after the credits of Battleship, and so I stuck around to see the most boring, pointless scene in the film.  It contains no surprises or pleasures.  When the credits roll, you may leave.