Old warrior in action once more for Battleship

A HISTORIC battleship plays a star role in Hollywood's latest supermovie.

AS Japanese emissaries boarded the USS Missouri in 1945 to sign the official surrender to the Allies in World War II, hundreds of American sailors stood to attention on the battleship's troop deck.

It's unlikely at that historic moment -- or, for that matter, at any subsequent moment -- any of those men envisaged himself on the same vessel 67 years later, fuelling the battleship's steam engine and preparing her for war. Hollywood director Peter Berg, however, has made it so.

A cast of US Navy veterans -- two of whom were aboard the Missouri for the surrender -- have an entertaining cameo in Battleship, Berg's big-budget alien-war film based loosely (very loosely) on the popular board game. Berg says having the veterans in the film, which stars the ageing vessel, is an honour.

"For me it was a lot of fun to get the old navy guys on board and to let them do a little fighting again on a ship some of them know very well," Berg says. "I have the utmost respect for these men -- most of them are in their 90s -- and to have them as even a small part of the film was just awesome."

Set in the present day, Battleship tells the story of humanity's fight for survival against aliens who have launched an attack on Earth following NASA's decision to beam communications signals into deep space with a new breed of new, high-powered satellites.

The satellite systems are set up on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, near the USN base. As the world's cities are attacked by alien forces, it is left to the USN, led by no-hoper turned hero Lieutenant Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch), to save the world.

Despite their best efforts, the elderly veterans don't steal the show from the film's billable, interminably sexy talent: Kitsch leads a cast that includes Liam Neeson (Admiral Shane), Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Brooklyn Decker (physiotherapist Sam Shane) and Rihanna, the chart-topping Barbadian pop singer, who plays insolent Petty Officer Cora Raikes.

"This is Rihanna's first movie role and I'm a fan," Berg says.

"I'd seen Rihanna perform (as a singer) and it was surprising to me that no one had asked her to be in a film before.

"I really believe that musicians can make a good transition into acting. They have similar skills sets. They both need to be emotional and open and free."

It is with a hint of embarrassment Berg concedes she is the first pop star to perform on the Missouri since a lingerie-clad Cher famously writhed atop one of its 16-inch guns for her 1989 hit Turn Back Time.

"Yeah, well, the navy doesn't like to talk about that," Berg says. "That was not considered a PR coup, shall we say. They've been pretty skittish about letting people film on the ship since Cher did that in her underwear. So we were lucky."

Filmed mostly on location in Honolulu, Battleship falls under the banner of what Berg terms a supermovie.

"In today's film business, there are two kinds of movies being made: low-budget ones and then these supermovies, very expensive films with a lot of visual effects that are designed to go out around the world. Battleship is one of those."

With reported production costs upwards of $200 million, and with "more than 1000" people having worked on the film, Battleship is well and truly the biggest movie on Berg's resume, which includes war film The Kingdom and American football franchise Friday Night Lights.

Basing a film on a board game, especially one so enduring -- Battleship was devised in 1967 -- was a challenge, says Berg.

"For me, it was fun and challenging to find clever ways of referencing the game in the movie," he says. "If you've played the game you will notice several references to it in the film. The weapons the aliens use? Well, their ordinates look similar to the pegs in the game. Two characters are trying to find the enemy . . . that's very reminiscent of the board game."

The screenplay's narrative thread, revolving around unknown forces launching a surprise attack on the USN in Hawaii, skates perilously close to an obvious historic parallel. But the script skirts any reference to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor -- indeed, Japan and the US take up arms together to battle against alien forces in what Berg says is a pleasing sign of the times.

"I was doing research for this movie in Pearl Harbor and I saw there were a large number of Japanese navy war ships . . . Japanese sailors were working with American sailors," Berg says.

"If my grandpa saw that he'd probably have dropped dead again. It shows that mortal enemies can become friends again, in this case in Hawaii."

Hawaii's favourite son also makes a cameo in the film: Barack Obama is seen on big screens in Times and Trafalgar squares warning citizens of the impending chaos.

"It's quite a cast, isn't it? Berg says, with a laugh. "Rihanna and Barack Obama."

Berg admits, after some prompting, that the Obama line was "finagled" but cleared with the President's people. "We found some footage of him talking about a potential tsunami that was going to hit Hawaii . . . I am hoping he would have been too busy to have filmed something for the movie."

Berg, presently working on a film called The Lone Survivor, about a fatal US Marines mission in Afghanistan, says he is attracted to tales of heroism.

"I am drawn to stories that showcase the emotion behind violence. I am drawn to men and women who put themselves in harm's way," he says.

"I'm not a soldier, and I'm not a cop. But I have a lot of respect for people who are."

Berg takes wars, and more particularly American involvement in them, very seriously. The son of a navy man, he recently lashed out at a pair of French film critics for suggesting they weren't particularly taken by his blockbuster. As he told a British film website: "I was f . . king furious. I was like: 'Do you have any idea what these men and what this ship did for your country?' I've been told not to talk about that but that does piss me off. How anyone could not have a certain amount, or at least some, respect for those guys . . . I told them to get their asses up to Normandy and look at the cemeteries and see how many people sacrificed their lives so that certainly France and other countries could be free."

Berg is not so forthright today, but the emotion in his voice is clear as he tells of getting permission to take the Missouri out of its permanent dock at Pearl Harbor, where it exists as a floating museum.

"They were refurbishing her in the dry dock, and were about to tow her back to her permanent dock, and I saw the ocean to our left and I said, 'What if we were to tow her into the ocean for a few hours and film it?" he says.

"The old guy who looked after her just laughed. Two months later that guy had tears in his eyes because it hadn't been out since the first Gulf War."

The Missouri, expected to find fresh fame on the film's release in the US next month, is now safely ensconced in its dock at Pearl Harbor; bellows unfired, guns silent, periscopes mercifully free of alien life.

"If you get a chance to see this ship, I highly recommend it," Berg says with genuine affection. "It really does mean a lot of things to a lot of people."

Battleship is in cinemas nationally.