Today’s quick review: Battle Drone. Vincent Reikker (Louis Mandylor) leads a team of mercenaries that handle black ops work for the CIA. Their latest mission is to fly into Chernobyl, accompanied by their handler Agent Hayes (Dominique Swain), and take control of a weapons cache hidden there. But Vincent and his team soon realize they have walked into an ambush: a field test for a new line of humanoid battle drones, with them as the targets.
Battle Drone is a budget sci-fi action movie that pits a team of elite mercenaries against cutting-edge robotic soldiers that are operated remotely. Battle Drone aims to be a stylish action flick with charismatic characters and slick action. Unfortunately, it falls well short of the mark. Flat acting, forgettable characters, and hit-or-miss cinematography all hold the movie back. Battle Drone offers a fair amount of action but little else.
Battle Drone tries a few neat tricks that it lacks the technical competence to pull off. The action sequences alternately slow down and speed up to send the camera zipping around the battlefield. The effect works well most of the time, but it’s betrayed by low-end special effects and small, pervasive errors in the camerawork and choreography. The drones are also mishandled, beginning the film as unstoppable tanks and ending it as clumsy pushovers.
The characters are another swing and a miss. Battle Drone goes to great lengths to set up Vincent’s unnamed team, including its martial arts expert (Dan Southworth), its sniper (Natassia Malthe), and its resident psychopath (Jason Earles). But with mediocre dialogue, minimal backstory, and an unexceptional cast, there’s little for the viewer to latch onto. Battle Drone avoids any major missteps with its characters, but they earn few points.
Watch Battle Drone only if you’re a sci-fi fan who’s in the mood for action and isn’t too picky about quality. Battle Drone manages to be watchable, at least by the standards of budget sci-fi, but it fails at the things that are meant to set it apart. For more suspenseful budget sci-fi action with a similar premise, check out Kill Command. For a better action movie about a team of mercenaries, check out The Expendables, The Losers, or The A-Team.
6.1 out of 10 on IMDB. I give it a 5.5 for decent action and lackluster overall execution.