First of all, the only reason I gave it 2 stars is because it had some very nice aerial shots of the Iowa being transported to her new berth. (Shots that have tugboats pushing her.)

The actual filming was not on board the Iowa. That was actually the North Carolina. I really hope the Town of Wilmington received adequate compensation for this piece of garbage. The battleship itself certainly didn't even get a fresh coat of paint in many of the rooms they filmed in.

Here come the spoilers.

So North Korea seemingly starts attacking both their neighbors to the south, and a US Carrier Battlegroup, and get the drop on everyone by using EMP. Thankfully, USS Iowa is mostly spared, since all of her main systems do not rely on integrated circuits. This appears to have been ripped off some from a book, titled "Tempered Steel".

When it's revealed that the antagonists are aliens, now we appear to be getting a ripoff of Battleship.

OK, I'm done with the spoilers.

Horrible cgi. Various stock footage of battleships with their hull number cgi'ed over to 61 (Iowa's hull number), but missing the number painted on top of one of the turrets. Bad acting with even worse lines. Bad, bad, bad.

Why did I watch it, you may ask? I was visiting family, and my Dad was a former officer on the Iowa. Naturally, despite my warnings that this looked bad in the commercials, he just HAD to see how the Iowa was portrayed.

when I saw that Mario Peebles was in this film I expected it to be rubbish.

And that is exactly what I got. Poor, no, very poor special affects. I have done better making my own special affects on the pc, in fact I would say that most readers could.

If you watch this film then you must really have nothing to do..

This is certainly a time waste movie. Cardboard acting.

Heed this warning. Do not waste your time watching this.....

I am still getting over how bad it all was. even the jet scene looks like it was super imposed.

lol I will be amazed if someone gives this film more than a 5/10

I noticed that there have been two somewhat positive reviews of this movie and both of them have received heavy marks for not being helpful to readers. It makes me wonder if there is an anti-Asylum contingent (or individual) with an axe to grind.

Having played golf for years I am used to driver knockoffs that don't measure up to the real thing but that typically are far more worthy than most movie knockoffs created by Asylum. So it is surprising to me that I didn't feel that way at the conclusion of American Warships.

Sure there is a certain amount of bad acting and scripted clichés that might make you wince but it is not to the level expected of Asylum.

Most end of the world, mega disaster movies seem to eventually leave me thinking that they were fun but I've seen it before. In AW, there is an appearance of creativity that manages to present something that I didn't feel as though I've seen it dozens of times.

For free television and original programming, AW manages to at least put forth a plot that might have been really interesting with a big budget. Don't enter this expecting a "Transformers" meets "Pearl Harbor" and accept it for what it is and I believe you'll be entertained.

That's a giant leap forward for Asylum on SyFy.