Excellent, excellent movie

Rating: 8/10 (11 July 2005)

This version of War of the Worlds manages to keep much of the book intact while grafting on a modern sensibility. Spielberg also manages to put his stamp on the story while retaining the feel of the original. In brief Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) is a father in a split family where mom is doing much better. Ray, pretty much a teenager all grown up physically, has the kids for the weekend when, wouldn't you know it, the Martians invade.
As usual, Spielberg is a master of building suspense. This film reminded me in spots of Jaws, still in my opinion his masterpiece, with its gradual build-up of horror and its ability to impart upon you the vague feeling that something is wrong without actually telling you what it is. The slow unraveling of the Martian threat, coupled with the terrifying visual when you first see the tripods, is startling; the visual of the heat ray is monstrously effective, and the Martian calling noise  described as 'ul-la' in the book but sounding more like an evil foghorn here  is frightening.
Spielberg blends the family stuff  strongly played by Cruise and Dakota Fanning  and the terror very well; one scene where Ray loses his cool because he doesn't know what to do is excellent. The man-child has to grow up suddenly, and Cruise conveys his frustration well. Toward the middle of the film the horror takes over completely as civilization succumbs to the onslaught, and we are treated to ghastly scenes of the sinister tripods striding above us, towering overlords bent on destroying us. Every ounce of the horror Wells was trying to invoke is preserved on screen.
But there is another level that makes War an effective film, and that is the analogy to 9/11. We are living our lives as ordinary citizens when a monstrous event happens; an enemy we did not foresee and cannot understand strikes at our very way of life; we are powerless to fight back (indeed one of the strongest scenes in the film is the doomed attempt by the military to stop the tripods); and we never truly understand what they want or why they have chosen to attack us. Images that mirror that awful day pop up in the film; a dust-encrusted Ray stumbles like a zombie into his house; people run pell mell, not knowing what to do, as the city falls all around them; hordes of people run across the bridge, an almost perfect reflection of what we saw on the news that Tuesday night. While Spielberg is perfectly capable of creating horror all on his own, his skillful tapping into our collective psyche notches up the fear factor even higher. For much of the film there's so much tension that you're on the edge of your seat.
The acting is all excellent  from Cruise to Fanning to Tim Robbins playing the composite character of the parson/the tunneler (two scenes from the book are merged, but it works fine, even if the Martians come off as a tad dim). Everyone reacts to these horrifying events in a completely believable fashion (again, sadly, we have a real-life precedent), and aside from a little Spielberg treacle at the end, they achieve a consistent emotional state of teetering on the edge of panic  not easy to maintain.
This is a very strong picture. Spielberg is clearly at home in this piece, able to flex muscles he hasn't used in a while. The film entertains and frightens on a number of levels and is wholly satisfying. The only weak part comes at the end, where Spielberg gives a little too much of an up-beat, and the plot lets us down a tad - but that's Wells' fault, not Spielberg's, and far better to adhere to the original than have the hero take out the alien armada in a clumsy ham-handed fashion (ala ID4). War would be best seen on the big screen  the terror would not be as effective and pervasive on your TV. Do yourself a favor and see this in the movies; it'll probably end up being the best movies of the summer, and it's well worth your $7.50 to see.