This is one of those movies which opened to a barrage of shit hurled at it by critics but when you actually watch it is surprisingly fun. Taylor Kitsch (who really ought to have changed his name as that's just asking for trouble) is the lead as the problem kid who rises to the occasion and Rihanna is a large gun-carrying grunt whose performance (despite all the crap heaped on her) is adequate to the role. The cast also includes Alexander Skarsgard and Liam Neeson (who, judging by the number of films he makes, is clearly trying to build a nice little nest egg for his impending old age).
Okay, it completely ignores the laws of Einsteinian physics by having a message encoded in a laser burst sent to an earth-like planet which has to be at least more than 4.4 light years away, Alpha Centauri not having any earth-like planets. However, not more than five years is enough time for the inhabitants of said earth-like planet to receive and understand the message and prepare an exploratory strike force and get it to Earth. However you just have to put up with things like that in popcorn movies. There are other dumb things in it but what the hell.
There are nice touches like the aliens being believably humanoid without being human and if you don't fire at them they won't fire at you. Their communications ship is critically damaged by ramming a large earth satellite (they were travelling very fast) and thereby allows great chunks of it to devastate Hong Kong in great detail. It also means that they have to use the communications station on Hawaii (where, conveniently our heroine -Brooklyn Decker of whom I've never heard- and a disabled vet are having a walk nearby) to send the message home -come on over boys, the Earthians are a pushover.
It takes a while to go get going but once it does it holds the attention until the end.
Well, okay, it is a load of crap, but it's a fun load of crap and I had a good time watching it.
PS.
There's an unexpected scene after the credits which has a completely different tone from the rest of the movie and is actually a little gem.
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