Good movie, but something was weird to me...

Rating: Null/10 (3 August 2002)

*** SPOILERS BELOW ***
I won't attempt to critique the plot or style of this movie any more than other reviewers already have. Obviously it was less about aliens and more about faith, but there was one key lapse in realism that partially ruined it for me. It's the scene where Mel is standing in the foyer with his children after they have gone to all the trouble of boarding up all the windows and doors. Mel has determined the aliens mean harm, he's convinced that an invasion is inevitable, he's figured out they can be harmed (with a kitchen knife), he's surmised that a pantry door can stop them. Here stands Mel with his beloved children standing in front of him in the foyer as aliens bang on the front door. What man in America would defend his children this way? I'm not implying this movie needed violence or guns to make it more believable or worthwhile, but there was a blatant absence of weapons from the movie. No military action reported in the news briefs. The best they could scare up at the end was a baseball bat? I can't imagine another man in the theater that wouldn't have barricaded himself and his family and stood in *front* of his children armed to the teeth (with whatever he had available). Regardless if you thought you were doomed or not, I for one wouldn't be offering myself and my children as sacrificial lambs to the slaughter. They had an axe in the basement, yet Joaquin's frail character ventures up the stairs to check the "all clear" armed with nothing but his fingernails. I don't get it, unless there was some protest by the writer/director to be had here. An American farmhouse in the midst of vast cornfields with a baseball bat hanging from the wall instead of a double-barreled shotgun? Please. I agree with a lot of other people that there's way too much violence and flashing of weapons in movies today, but the opposite extreme with a story of defending your family from an alien invasion just seems weird.