Not what i was expecting

Rating: 7/10 (3 July 2005)

The Opening scene to this movie is, for lack of a better word, incredible. It starts out with great potential, the characters are set up well (even though, the initial "uncomfortable" meeting of the divorced family was a little cliché) the story introduced evenly and smoothly, and the first attack scene is beautifully filmed, the first running sequence is perfect (as long as you bite your lip at the digital camera flop). Then the film starts to slide a little bit. The acting by Cruise and Fanning is spot on, and Robbins does an excellent character role, but the way the action is presented bugged me a little.
It appeared that Spielberg was trying to keep the audience on the wars effects on the family and not on the world. Its kind of a "third person limited" perspective, and that would have been fine with me in a situation where the event was well known (say like a WW2 setting) but this story is of course unknown to the audience, so the fact that we never get to see the whole picture, the devastation in its full glory, that we only see the edge of the large battles and hear glimpses of the attacks on other country's gnawed at me the whole time. I was hoping that they would reveal all that at the very end, that we would be stunned to see that the huge effect on the family was minuscule compared to the world devastation, but because that never happened I feel like I can't really appreciate what the family went through.
The Cinematography and the score was beautiful, and the effects were completely stunning but the story left so many loop holes in my head that i couldn't come out feeling entirely satisfying.
Although i must say that any movie narrated by Morgan Freeman has got a place i my book
7 1/2 out of 10