Tom Cruise: the "Huh?" hero

Rating: 7/10 (1 July 2005)

OK, first of all, War of the Worlds is an entertaining movie -- there are cool scenes and good visuals, and the aliens are just plain freaking mean. When their ships show up, you know something bad is going to happen. For that reason, this movie is worth watching. And of course, this movie is typically Speilburgian -- lots of interesting camera ambiance and tons of scenes of people looking at stuff instead of running for their lives like normal people would do (until it's too late, of course).
Tom Cruise on the other hand: you see him being pimped on practically every station and every talk show in order to build hype for the film, but when you actually see him on screen... Mr. Cruise's character is pretty-much a nobody, nothing really special about him. In fact, he's almost deliberately UN-special. Yet for some reason, he's always the first to notice stuff, the first to do anything, and always seems to want to be at the front of the crowd; it's like watching a kid beat a video game with the cheat codes when you know he's not really good at playing the game. If anyone should be shown on every talk show selling the movie it should be Dakota Fanning, the Lil' Drew Barrymore of her day.
Story-wise, this movie is almost identical to the original War of the Worlds (which I personally think is better), except that as fore-mentioned Cruise's character is a nobody that figures out things, whereas in the original the male lead was a leading scientist, which made more sense when he uncovered truths. I would have liked to see the alien vessels more in the movie, but when they did appear it was scary as heck.
All in all... Watch the movie with a friend if you just want to entertain yourselves for a night, but don't go in expecting revelations or to leave in some kind of awe.