Principal Cast Taylor Kitsch -- Lieutenant Alex Hopper Alexander Skarsgård -- Commander Stone Hopper Rihanna -- Petty Officer Cora 'Weps' Raikes Brooklyn Decker -- Samantha Shane Tadanobu Asano -- Captain Yugi Nagata Hamish Linklater -- Cal Zapata Liam Neeson -- Admiral Shane Peter MacNicol -- Secretary of Defense Ratings Ratings are based on Rick's four star system. One star - the commercials are more entertaining than the viewing. Two stars - watch if you have nothing better to do. Three stars - good solid entertainment. Four stars - you never dreamed viewing could be this good.

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Battleship is not nearly as bad as many reviewers would have you believe, certainly not, as one reviewer said, the worst movie ever made. It took quite a bit of ingenuity to get an actual battleship into the film. (There are no battleships in the modern Navy.) And it took a certain cleverness to have a reason for warring combatants to use a strategy not unlike that in the Battleship game.

Of course, it is silly to base a major film on a board game, but I tried searching IMDB for a board game that has not been made into a film, and couldn't find one.

The greatest offense against science is to ignore the speed of light. I like the fact that the monsters are humane -- they only attack when fired upon, and spare the life of a child. And it is not totally unbelievable that the entire armed might of the planet Earth could hold off a small alien fleet far from home, no matter what its technological advantage. After all, the Hawaiians ate Captain Cook.

Only parts in the middle are noticeably boring. There are worse ways to spend a Saturday afternoon.

Erich and Jon Hoeber also wrote RED and two other movies.

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Rick Norwood is a mathematician and writer whose small press publishing house, Manuscript Press, has published books by Hal Clement, R.A. Lafferty, and Hal Foster. He is also the editor of Comics Revue Monthly, which publishes such classic comic strips as Flash Gordon, Sky Masters, Modesty Blaise, Tarzan, Odd Bodkins, Casey Ruggles, The Phantom, Gasoline Alley, Krazy Kat, Alley Oop, Little Orphan Annie, Barnaby, Buz Sawyer, and Steve Canyon. Visit his web site at comicsrevue.com.