rubbish aliens but OK film.

Rating: 7/10 (2 October 2005)

War of the worlds No one will forget the arrival of the first tri-pod. It is one of the most amazing set pieces I have ever seen. From a small hole in the road made by freak lightning all hell breaks loose and my god what an impressive hell. Fifteen minutes of pure unstoppable chaos, I was sat open-mouthed. Sticking much to the original but with dashes of Spielberg's flair for action and adventure the story is quite a simple one. What would happen to earth were we invaded, threatened and seemingly helpless? Is it everyman for himself or each other? Well as it turns out both, people go crazy prepared to do anything to escape or people like tom cruises character holding it together for the sake of his family. This is Spielberg so you get the slightly hammy family value motifs loosely woven into the plot, but it doesn't really matter or get in the way. Most impressive though are the tri-pods and their gadgets and gizmos. Rising like a football stadium sized iron with an eyeball and lasers, when the culling of humans begins you start to wonder how Spielberg got it to be a 12a (he has done this trick before, see Jaws: swallows man alive, Jurassic park: two t-rex's rip man in half, A.I.: flaming heads flying through the air towards children etc) The red weed is after all human blood. So in a flurry of disintegrated locals tom flees with his kids to nowhere in particular but just not there. In this respect the film is similar to signs, told from the view of one family's struggle against a greater evil, a sort of futuristic road movie. We get an idea of what is happening in the rest of the world from TV reports and radio bulletins. Spielberg's direction makes it so that by the time you reach the Hudson ferry scenes you've almost forgotten the amazing storms that started the whole thing. Ultimately there is a start to this story but not really an end and in this way it is true to the original and the way it's done means the film doesn't really need one. Best of all was the couple that sat behind me who were gushing at the prospect of wotw 2 & 3 because of this. There is bound to be three he said to his wife just like star wars. Oh how I laughed. A bold piece of summer eye-candy. A little too dark for the under twelve's but alien-tastic fun for everyone else.