Spielbergs unfriendly aliens

Rating: 9/10 (8 July 2005)

Title: War of the Worlds (2005)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Tim Curry, Justin Chatwin
Review:
Steven Spielbergs Close Encounters of the Third Kinds was the directors first entry into the world of science fiction films. Aliens coming down to visit us from another distant world has always been a subject that fascinates Mr. Spielberg and his taken us down the road of benevolent creatures visiting and befriending humans in the past. Who can forget E.T. the extraterrestrial and his friendship with his human friend Elliot? Who can forget the light and sound spectacle at the ending of Close Encounters? Now Spielberg returns to a genre his familiar with but this time....the aliens ain't friendly.
War of the Worlds is a new adaptation of H.G. Wells novel about martians coming down to earth to completely destroy the human race without mercy. This time around the story focuses on the story of Ray an immature divorced guy who's a terrible father and is having a hard time having his kids love him. In the midst of all the family crisis the aliens come down to earth and start wrecking havoc on the human race.
When we go watch a movie like this, we are expecting to see some alien mayhem, we want to see the aliens destroy the buildings and kill the humans...and we also enjoy seeing the way that they humans fight back and ultimately kick the martians asses back to their home planet. And for the most part we get some of that. The first half of the film, which focuses almost entirely on the arrival of the creatures and the destruction that they bring is incredibly impressive because it gives us exactly what we are looking for. Destruction and mayhem of gargantuan proportions. The level of chaos witnessed in the first half of the film is very satisfying for the kid in all of us who still enjoys seeing cool special effects and aliens wrecking havoc.
From the special effects point of view the film is incredible, the images of the tripod alien machinery is truly eerie. They have a very real un-cgi feel to them. The machines look as if they were really looming over the mountains and city scapes. Spielberg goes nuts in the first few frames of the alien invasion showing us different ways in which the aliens exterminate the humans like insects.
And since this is Steven Spielberg were talking about here, this film will not only be about cool special effects. I think its great how he can balance things out. He will give us a cool special effects show that will leave your jaw wide open, and then he can give us the human emotional side of the story, the one thats not so much about monsters and effects. The one thats about how us as humans would react in a situation like that. Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Tim Robbins and Justin Chatwin all do an excellent job of portraying human emotions. Dakota fanning is shaping up to be one heck of an actress, I truly think she will be one of the great actresses in years to come. Cruise, playing the role of an irresponsible, childlike adult who refuses to grow up is great.
Here comes the bad news though. Having Cruise in the main role, I kind of never felt as if the characters were in any real danger. You always kind of like go, well, lets see how he will escape this one, cause there's no way in hell that he will die. And thats exactly the way it was through out the whole movie. Things were exploding into a gazillion pieces, people were disintegrated a few inches away from him, but Cruise, Dakota and Justin were completely indestructible. Nothing touched them and that just made the whole movie all the less real for me. Though we get great performances from everyone, we never feel like they are in any danger whatsoever.
Another let down of the film was that in this type of film you expect a big showdown between humans and aliens, you expect that big brawl where humans do their standoff and show the nasty aliens who's really in charge of this planet. But sadly the anti-climatic ending is nothing like that. Though the ending makes great sense and from a scientific stand point is perfectly valid...it just didn't satisfy in the way that we were expecting after being locked up in a basement for the second half of the film.
All in all this flick was a fun, very well acted film with great effects and production values. One of the best flicks of the summer no doubt, sadly many people will be bummed out by the not so exciting ending.
Rating: 4 1/2 out of 5