A novel but mostly uninteresting take on a sci-fi classic.

Rating: 5/10 (17 July 2005)

According to a recent edition of Newsweek, Steven Spielberg tried hard to avoid all the worn out "natural disaster/alien invasion" clichés in his latest summer blockbuster, War of the Worlds: no shots of world capitals, no famous monuments being destroyed, no politicians or scientists or generals as main characters, etc.
Spielberg and screenwriter David Koepp succeed in this and instead create a gritty, down-to-earth scope for their adaptation of H.G. Wells' novel by centering the action around everyman Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise), a distinctly nonheroic protagonist who, with his two kids in tow, barely flees the horror and annihilation of an unstoppable alien attack. This could have been a good setup for more layered character interaction and development, but unfortunately, due to a flat storyline and a lack of characterization, the movie falls short in that regard. With the exception of a couple minor changes in attitude, everyone ends up exactly the same as how they started out.
Still, the action was nicely choreographed and the special effects were used well, seamlessly present but not the focus or a crutch for the film. And some shots were visually quite impressive - an alien tripod rising from a crater for the first time and vaporizing everything in sight while people flee in panic; a runaway train, engulfed in flames, roaring through a railway crossing; Ray emerging from a hiding place to find a barren landscape soaked in blood, the horizon burning. The extended basement crawling scene had shades of Jurassic Park's velociraptors-in-the-kitchen in terms of suspense and tension.
This movie would have been a lot more effective if the story had some shape to it. As it is, all we got was a cast of two-dimensional characters frantically running on and off the screen for about ninety minutes, with very little by way of rising action, climax, or resolution. The filmmakers are not entirely to blame, however, as they did stay true to the original novel's somewhat anticlimactic ending.
Focusing the story on a normal family's struggle to survive was a good idea, but in the end not followed through sufficiently to make the movie outstanding.