Battleship (2012)

“Battleship” -– based on the board game -– bombed in theaters, and a viewing reinforces its death as deserved. The is an ugly CGI-drunk mess, taking 40 minutes to start as director Peter Berg (“Kingdom”) and his screenwriters break their backs and our patience introducing a screw-up U.S. Navy hero (Taylor Kitsch) destined for greatness when evil aliens invade Earth. Plot? Aliens attack. Navy fights back. That’s it. Unless you count the burrito subplot as vital. I do not. This could have used a rewrite and a butcher’s knife in the editing room because even Liam Neeson, onscreen for 15 minutes, looks bored as the Navy commander/father of Kitsch’s girlfriend. Here’s the real riddle: Despite the dull rip off of “Transformers” and “Halo” that defines 95 percent of the flick, Berg coolly employs real veterans young (Gregory Gadson, amazing) and old (WW2 and Korean vets) as saviors of our Hollywood-cast cardboard heroes and this move openly calls bullshit on every rah-rah action hero ever made. Corny? Yes. But it works. Alas, inept studio mentality sinks smarts. Bombs away! C

Savages (2012)

Oliver Stone returns with “Savages,” a grisly flick that follows drug dealer best friends who sell California’s most-in-demand weed. Chon (Taylor Kitsch) is scared-by-war ex-military, while Ben (Aaron Johnson) is a hippie botanist with a penchant for mission work. They are yin and yang, with O (Blake Lively), the surfer girl drug addict they share an ocean-side home and bed with, in circle’s center. “Savages” gets to its title fast as a Mexican drug cartel (led by Salma Hayek) busts in with a do-or-die business proposal. This is a nasty and sickly funny production, hallucinogenic as anything Stone has made. Yet gun-shot holes pop loud as a double-barreled ending serves ludicrously tragic followed by ludicrously pat, while much dialogue grinds as when O speaks of Chon: “I have orgasms, he has wargasms.” Huh? Loved: How Hayek and her thugs look on perplexed as the gringos piss away life and family. Hated: Hayek deliciously serves up the notion that the guys love each other more so than O, and the revelation is left dead and forgotten like the myriad bodies that fill this tale. The “Butch Cassidy” references only hinder. B-