Looked Real to Me

Rating: 7/10 (27 November 2005)

Ray (Cruise) a divorced father of two receives his kids from the mother for the weekend and all hell breaks loose. The War has started.
I have no idea what they used or how they did this, but the special effects of roads buckling, buildings simply losing their adhesion and collapsing, Alien Tri-Pods walking thru brick buildings, bridges separating and turning over, and cars flying thru the air like they had some place to go was unlike any special effects I have ever seen. And, it all looked very real.
My thoughts went to the Orson Wells' broadcast (I read about it) in the late 1930s when Americans really believed they were being invaded by beings from Mars. That must have been scary stuff. This was scary stuff too. No one knew what to do, or where to go when the Tri-Pods the aliens used came to life obliterating everything in their way. Ray needed to get his kids to their mother in Boston and it seemed as though everyone else had someone in Boston to see also as there were miles of a ribbon of human flesh headed that way.
After the initial attacks, things quieted down for the rest of the movie. That was a mistake because the second half of the movie sort of died. Yes, there were still some scary moments, but not on the scale that opened the movie. Oh, there was the human interest story regarding Ray and what a lousy father he must have been, but still he fought to get his kids to Boston. Then, some uncomfortable scenes with Tim Robbins comes into play as he tries to help Ray with the girl (Fanning) now since the boy had to go to the front to see what was happening for himself. Teenagers!
I couldn't figure out why Dakota Fanning was in this movie. There was nothing striking about her performance and I still believe she will be one of our best actresses in time. No, I think she is on a mission to work with all the biggest names in the business before she is 15. I could be wrong. Speaking of being 15, Fanning looked every bit 10-yrs old in the beginning. By the end of the movie she looked like a young teen-ager. Hmmmmm.
Where the Aliens came from was never explained. Mars was never mentioned. Everything seemed to happen on the way to Boston, as there was no mention of anything being shown in other countries and yes, the power outages may have had something to do with that.
How did it end, you ask? How did we beat the unbeatable alien race hell bent on exterminating us when everything our army did was of no consequence? Well, as smaaaaaaart (we're in Boston now) as the Aliens were, they overlooked one thing.
Overall, pretty good and worth going to see if only for the special effects. Looked real to me.