1-Star to all those that didn't get it and 10-stars to me !

Rating: 1/10 (5 July 2005)

If you're going to watch this movie, please leave halfway through, around the time Cruise is resisting the tripods efforts to take him inside. Watch until that point, go home, think about the movie, go to the theatre the next day and watch the movie in full.
What we have here is a deeply subversive movie few people will "get". The clues are clear at the beginning, the clue is the reaction of Ferriers kids on him arriving home somewhat distressed after evading plasma-death-ray. Children who have not seen death with their own eyes do not understand death. One expects even science fiction movies, whose scenarios are usually wholly unreal, to have characters who behave like they're experiencing reality(as disturbing and as unreal as it appears to the viewer).
And thus even though an extremely noisy incineration of the local populace takes place on their doorstep, Ferriers daughter and son are oblivious and perplexed by their dads deeply shocked state. Incidentally, Ray Ferriers daughter(Sophia) is always telling her dad what to do, until she Experiences true fear.
OK, what follows is the theme of judgement day, collective judgement day is a dramatic device designed to make one aware of ones own mortality(and even better - others). The other theme is love perverted into attachment. Such love knows anger, giving commands and orders, and not generosity or even ethics.
It is notable that come judgement day, those who have been deprived of their possessions will vent fury on those who adamantly keep hold of theirs(this would be Ferrier driving his car into a crowd oblivious of the plight of others, absorbed in the fate of his own possessions, those kids of his). By the way, Ferrier doesn't even own the car he's driving, do we truly own anything other than our deeds?
The allusion to a beating heartbeat that is the noise of the footsteps of a tripod heightens the existential message of this film, when ones appointed time with the lord of death is near, you'll hear your heartbeat.
Of course Hollywood is incapable of telling it as it is, although it isn't the fault of Steven Spielberg and Josh Friedman in this case(both of whom combine to turn out an excellent movie for those who have the seeing eye). Because the conditioned public can't handle the truth, this, one of the best of movies (science-fiction or otherwise) makes a mockery of its audience. Cruise escapes from the clutches of tripod death, saves his daughter, and is reunited with all his loved ones(make that - attachments)....and all thanks to his own will and the humblest of creatures - bacteria.
Evading death just isn't possible, and it goes without saying your children are neither immune to the inevitable or in fact "yours". And so the film culminates with man paying homage to micro-organism, if anyone bought that, this is the final insult to mans stupidity.
END WORLD POVERTY NOW