A Big (Non-Martian) Mess

Rating: Null/10 (19 January 2006)

This owes so little to the stated source-novel that the use of the title is surprising. As we would expect from Spielberg, it's visually stunning, but it resorts to so many other expected Spielberg clichés that these images are subsumed in a sea of schmaltz. Spielberg films either involve a child of separated parents or a man who has lost (or is in the process of losing) his family. The military and authority figures in general, are either self-serving or inept. Technology is rarely to be trusted. All this is here, along with the cheesiest sentimental ending the film-maker has manufactured in many years.
Ultimately this film sinks because of casting. Dakota Fanning  who gave DeNiro a run for his money, recently, and is the favoured child-actor-in-peril for supernatural or sci-fi thrillers (she was the best thing in Spielberg's TV venture, 'Taken')  is good, but her character is not allowed to develop. This is something of an oddity for Mr S. who is usually very good in dealing with kids. Justin Chatwin is plain annoying, and I don't think I was alone in hoping against hope that his character was hit by a heat-ray when he vanishes part-way through the film. Sadly, though, he survives  hey this in a Spielberg movie. The casting of Tom Cruise as a gutsy but feckless blue-collar divorcée dad is preposterous. Noel Coward would be marginally more convincing in such a role. Even Tom Hanks, Spielberg's other regular leading man these days, by virtue of his pot-belly and potato face would have been better in the role. Tim Robbins, as a deranged paramedic, gives the best and most layered performance in the film  despite having little more than ten minutes screen-time.
This is, by far, the most violent Spielberg film I've ever seen, and is, clearly, visually informed by TV coverage of the Twin Towers  with grey faced crowds, swamped in dust and debris. Indeed the destruction of New Jersey is so unremitting that the best word to describe this film might well be 'relentless'.