Battlefield Earth Review

The strangest thing about Battlefield Earth is how much of it was made with care. Patrick Tatopoulos builds a plausible ruined Denver and a Psychlo compound with real weight, the creature makeup is elaborate and specific, and Elia Cmiral's score is played by a full orchestra. Somebody meant this.

Direction sinks it. Roger Christian cants the camera in nearly every setup, so two hours are spent reading a world that is always sliding out of the frame, and the effect is not comic book energy but seasickness. The grade pushes everything toward a bruised blue and a sour yellow until faces stop reading. Slow motion arrives for events that carry no weight. Giles Nuttgens is a capable cinematographer and individual shots here do hold, which makes the pattern more frustrating rather than less.

The script is the other half. Terl's scheme requires the Psychlos, who took the planet in nine minutes, to overlook that humans can be taught nuclear physics by a Psychlo machine, that thousand year old Harrier jets will start, and that Fort Knox is the first place anyone would look. Every act turns on the villains being stupid in a new way, and stupidity is not menace.

John Travolta plays Terl enormous, with a laugh and a strut, and Forest Whitaker finds something like a personality in Ker. The performances are pitched far too broad and the dialogue gives them nothing to hold, but they are awake, which is more than the plot manages. The Razzies swept it in 2001 and later named it the worst of its decade. That verdict has held.