Review
WAR OF THE WORLDS
Starring Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning and Miranda Otto
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Now playing
War of the Worlds is like a portfolio of director Steven Spielberg’s best tricks. Leaving aside the obvious alien film comparisons, there are bits and pieces from many of his previous directing projects – Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Minority Report, Jurassic Park – complete with sentimental family values, a schmaltzy ending and some downright tactless button-pushing. Throw in a shark and an archeologist with a whip, and this could be a greatest hits compilation. Steven Spielberg can put on a heck of a show when he wants to, and in War of the Worlds, he really wants to.
Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) is a deadbeat dad who must save his estranged tweenie daughter Rachel (lovable moppet Dakota Fanning) and cusp-of-manhood son Robbie (Justin Chatwin, a.k.a. ‘lil Jake Gyllenhall) when Martians invade Earth. Tim Robbins plays Ogilvy, a slightly unhinged invasion survivor who lives in a cellar. Cruise – well, he’s Tom Cruise. It’s just refreshing to see him without Katie Holmes dangling from his lower lip.
Gone are the peaceful visitors of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, gone is cute ’n’ cuddly E.T. – the aliens of War of the Worlds are nasty bastards. Descending in bolts of lightning to activate their "tripod" killing machines, these creatures are intergalactic exterminators, terrifying in their relentless, almost bureaucratic, ferocity. Spielberg manages to build an atmosphere of palpable dread, and more than one scene is genuinely disturbing. Naturally, once the aliens themselves appear (in their anthropomorphic computer-generated glory), the movie loses its scare factor and becomes utter garbage. But up until that point, it’s great.
War of the Worlds works spectacularly well for its first hour because the special effects are so well done, and because the characters’ responses to the invasion seem credible. People rubberneck and giggle nervously, they go into shock, they swarm in desperate masses, they fight each other and they exhibit occasional bursts of decency and altruism. Characters are not divided cleanly into heroes, victims and villains – and Spielberg shmaltz notwithstanding, there’s a sense that everyone is equally vulnerable.
Some of the significant events from the War of the Worlds novel have been preserved, as has the book’s resigned but humane tone. Spielberg and screenwriter Josh Friedman have even used Wells’s ending, which is going to be mighty unsatisfying for those who are unfamiliar with the book and are expecting some lone-vigilante-versus-Martian action.
War of the Worlds is mainly set in New York, and its inevitable nods to the 9-11 tragedy are borderline obnoxious. Stealing iconic, emotionally saturated images to lend your summer blockbuster more resonance is plain lazy. But imagine how this story would have turned out if the script had ended up in Jerry Bruckheimer’s hamfists. Shudder. |
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