Flawed brilliance.

Rating: 8/10 (1 July 2005)

I wasn't sure quite what to expect when I walked into this one. On the one hand I knew that Spielberg would pay due homage to the H.G. Wells classic, and that the movie would be undoubtedly visually stimulating. However, I was nervous that Spielberg would pull...well... a Spielberg on us and douse the movie in schmultz. I suppose, thinking back to the movie, he did. Oh well.
Visually, this movie really was stunning. In one scene we find our protagonist (by appearances a world-weary Tom Cruise) running for the first time from the invaders, and the visuals present here blew my mind as people were, almost literally, blown away. The level of detail present in the CGI is truly fantastic, and it not being "obvious" CGI did wonders to suspend my disbelief. There is some very 'Saving Private Ryan' style camera work implemented throughout the movie, furthering the realism of each scene. At times, Spielberg must have used just a camera in his hand. This technique really brings viewers into the movie as a part of the fleeing people.
Unfortunately, all is not perfect. The movie becomes a little laboured when Cruise and his daughter are hiding in a basement with the (increasingly tiresome) Tim Robbins. The audience I watched the movie with chuckled as he skulks into view. This segment proceeds far too slowly, and the "mirror part" was plain silly. The allusion to 'Jurassic Park' is obvious here.
I also question Spielberg's ending. Though by no means completely unsatisfying, it was skimmed over rather quickly. I'm very much a fan of the invaders being destroyed not by humans, but by what we fight every day: bacteria, but the Spielberg ending didn't have the finesse of execution I was hoping for. It's as if it didn't really matter that the aliens failed in their attempt to annihilate humans. It was as if the narrator was really saying "humans were being slaughtered. It was devastating to us. But then the bacteria got the aliens and they died. The end." Slightly anticlimactic, non? When you add this to the grandparents standing by their door in Boston, looking like horrifically stereotypically smiley-faced American grandparents, the gag bag just has to come out.
So, in conclusion we have a superbly visualised movie, bogged down by an unnecessarily long middle segment and a rushed and vomit-tastic conclusion.
Oh, but see it.