Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on April 2012

In what is essentially a neato recruiting film for the US Navy and Japan’s MSDF, alien invaders splash down off Hawaii during the annual RIMPAC exercises, and it’s up to Taylor Kitsch and Tadanobu Asano to save the world. Aegis destroyers and fighter aircraft are stymied by a force field, so we earthlings turn to an older battle technology that I was asked not to reveal (but look at the friggin’ title!). I wondered why an alien race capable of traversing interstellar space would then start lobbing mortars at us until I saw that this is adapted from the Hasbro video game. Big snore unless you’re 10.