Battle: Los Angeles’: Where’s the Joker?

I’ve never thought of Aaron Eckhart as an action hero.

Yeah, he was Harvey Dent/Two-Face in “The Dark Knight,” and he shared billing with two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank in “The Core” (which had the two of them drilling to the center of the Earth, as I recall). And he even played a kind of biker opposite another Oscar winner, Julia Roberts, in “Erin Brockovich.”

But he’s always been more of an ac-tore, you know? The kind who wasn’t afraid to play a creep in his buddy Neil LaBute ‘s sociological study “In the Company of Men.” Or to gain weight to play a mealy-mouth in LaBute’s “Your Friends & Neighbors.” Or, best of all, to play the guy at the wedding party trying to connect — reconnect? — with Helena Bonham Carter in the enduringly independent “Conversations With Other Women.”

Now he’s starring in a sci-fi/war flick titled “Battle: Los Angeles.” Huh?

Actually, it was brilliant of director Jonathan Liebsman to cast Eckhart in a role that, on the SyFy channel, might have gone to Richard Grieco or Dean Cain. Eckhart actually brings some seriousness to lines that a lesser actor might have treated as mere throw-aways.

You know the story: “Meteors” approaching Earth are actually pods holding extraterrestrials bent on colonizing the planet. Eckhart plays a Marine sergeant who is part of the U.S. defense team. And if there’s anything surprising about “Battle: Los Angeles,” it’s that the film is far more of a classical war flick than anything remotely sci-fi.

It’s actually a variation on “Independence Day” without the cheap jokes. “Battle: Los Angeles,” until it begins waving the flag about half way through, is actually fairly entertaining … to students of war drama, at least. After that, well, it’s still a bit better than a Grieco production, though it employs about every war-film cliche ever invented.

For the first time ever, I found myself wondering: He might have created one of the great laughers of all time with his remake of “The Wicker Man,” but I wonder what LaBute would have done with this?

Hell, Labute might have given Eckhart three faces to play with. And wouldn’t that have been fun?