A better review (http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/entertainment/movies/12006990.htm):
It turns out, it's not the end of the world. You just wish it were by the end of the movie.
(I love this next line!)
"War of the Worlds" is a picture without a thought in its pretty head: the Tom Cruise movie to end all Tom Cruise movies.
(great, wasn't it?) :D
If we're lucky. The movie has nothing much to say about the shape the world is in, other than a few reflexive questions about whether the explosions that accompany the arrival of space invaders might actually be caused by "the terrorists."
Oh, them.
The last time somebody made this movie, its subtext was all about the Cold War. But the new version's closest brush with metaphor arrives as the movie dead-ends in Boston, when some pigeons land on one of the alien fighting ships near Faneuil Hall, apparently mistaking it for a statue of Paul Revere on horseback. Tom Cruise -- who never stops seeming exactly like Tom Cruise, even though his character has been given the unlikely name Ray -- gets very excited about this and tries to shout something to a soldier. But there's so much noise in the movie at all times that the soldier can't hear him, and neither can we. This gives you something to talk about as you exit the theater.
"War of the Worlds" is supposed to be about aliens who go stomping around the countryside on long-legged fighting platforms -- known instantly to everyone in the movie as Tripods -- that almost certainly are the least practical interplanetary attack vehicles ever devised. But the invaders are only there to provide a backdrop for the movie's seemingly endless tableaux of Tom Cruise -- Tom Cruise running for his life, Tom Cruise being bathed in the blood of others, Tom Cruise yelling at his movie kids like a guy who wishes he knew where to get his hands on some Ritalin.
The best science fiction movies are grounded in everyday life, as pictures such as "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and "The Day the Earth Stood Still" ably demonstrate. But "War of the Worlds" operates at such a distant remove from reality that when the invasion turns hundreds of thousands of people into refugees, wandering across New Jersey, we don't see a single displaced dog among them. This is a movie so completely de-contextualized from real life that it makes you yearn nostalgically for the unreality TV of Cruise's recent rampage through the talk shows.
Director Steven Spielberg and writer David Koepp, who collaborated on "Jurassic Park," have updated the story and the special effects so completely that comparisons to the novel upon which the movie is based -- written by H.G. Wells in 1898 -- or the 1953 sci-fi picture by producer George Pal are pointless. Spielberg is more likely trying to create a visual analog to the historic radio broadcast by Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre on Oct. 30, 1938, but the astonishments that Welles conjured for the mind's eye have now been given the face of a cultural banality.
As you would expect, the movie is larded with visual effects that keep Ray and his children, Robbie and Rachel -- the Raylettes -- in constant peril. Spielberg makes the threat to the rest of the world seem real enough, but the story is told through the eyes of Cruise's character, and we know that he will remain in a protective bubble for the duration of the picture. With that realization, boom goes the dynamite of our illusions. And our fears.
The only really scary moments come when bad things threaten the life of 10-year-old Rachel, played by the 47-year-old child impersonator Dakota Fanning. In fact, the creepiest scene in "War of the Worlds" is also one of the quietest, and it comes when Spielberg allows his camera to linger on Fanning's face as she takes in a horrible sight.
There are other splendid images in the film, as when a train suddenly races by Ray and the army of darkness he has joined, making them all look up from their zombie-like trance in wonder at the train's bright lights.
There also is a long scene involving an alien probe with a face that makes him look like the misbehaving younger brother of E.T., the extraterrestrial. The probe is sent into a basement to search for humans, which is odd, because until then the invaders have simply been blasting buildings to bits, indiscriminately vaporizing everybody in them. When they come to the house where Ray is hiding with a loonyburgher played by Tim Robbins, suddenly they start going door to door like Amway salesmen.
Come to think of it, maybe it is the end of the world after all.
Oh. well that's quite different.
Maybe I'd better wait and hear a few more reviews.
A different review, not a better one. And I can't imagine what movie he was watching, because the one I watched was frightening all the way through.
This review is closer to my experience with past Tom Cruise movies: "How Tom Cruise would react if..."
Anyway, America has been "invaded, full on" by Tom Cruise for the last month, so I may pass on this one.
There are other splendid images in the film, as when a train suddenly races by Ray and the army of darkness he has joined, making them all look up from their zombie-like trance in wonder at the train's bright lights.This reviewer did not pay attention to the movie... the train's "bright lights" were FLAMES coming out of every passenger window as the runaway train roared past the people standing by the crossing at a speed far higher than normal. It was a train coming from hell, heading toward disaster.