lacklustre and lazy but with moments of typical brilliance

Rating: 5/10 (25 July 2005)

CONTAINS SPOILERS
War of the Worlds is a semi-intelligent, new take on an old genre. Whereas films in the past tend to focus on heroic bloodshed or the right people in the right place saving the day, here we have a far more intimate and realistic perspective: the American families involved don't head off to discover their amazing flying skills over the course of two hours, they run away in terror, each man, woman and child constantly battling with his or her inner demon's, weakness and fear, something which is probably best represent by Cruise's son suggesting that the Smiler himself is merely looking for his ex-wife to pawn his children off on her.
Whether this is true or not is an avenue left unexplored and this detracts from the film a great deal. War of the World's emotional heart, like many Spielberg movies, is either on its sleeve or invisible. Examples include Jurassic Park where the only emotions Richard Attenborough was allowed to express were child like enthusiasm, child like fear, child like anguish and child like cynicism when it is suggested that he might have made a teensy weensy mistake in creating an island full of giant carnivores.
However, unlike Jurassic Park, War of the Worlds fails to screw the tension into the unbearable levels of previous Spielberg epics. When, for example, Attenborough's grand children (or is he their granduncle?) are being pursued by Raptors through the kitchens in Jurassic Park it is as tense a moment as can be imagined, expertly drawn out with many false dawns and dramatic reverses. The consummate skill shown in making that and other scenes made Jurassic Park one of the greatest and most successful films ever (the prefix 'Greatest' is purely in a popcorn, summer blockbuster sense).
On the other hand... when a giant, snake like head goes poking around in War of the Worlds, in a scene that seems remarkably tacked on at the last minute, the tension is more 'Why are they doing that?' than 'Please don't die! Oh God, I can't look...!' Tim Robbin's character feels like little more than an excuse to present the darker side of human interactions. Instead of Cruise's rushing around to return his children to their mother we have a long, drawn out scene which makes little sense (Signs style incompetent, unobservant, they-can-cross-the-void-of-space-but-they-can't-find-three-people aliens) and ends with different humans, notably a black soldier, being all heroic and saving our Lord Tom.
This ties into another, niggly point: continuity. As has already been pointed out on this website, Spielberg somehow fails to remember that his electrical storm ought to destroy various electrical equipment such as digital cameras (most importantly with the journalist who shows Cruise one of the aliens landing in his/her/its giant tripod). Similarly: when Cruise's prison is dropped by the tripod he destroys with grenades no human inside is even remotely hurt, despite the fact that the impact destroys the metal shell enough to crack it open. Most annoyingly: a person, who was a very annoying character much deserving of death in my opinion, rushes headlong into a suicidal battle only to turn up safe and sound later on. On top of all this, Boston is apparently too irrelevant a metropolis to warrant destruction by alien invaders.
Finally the last awkward detail: why would aliens capable of burying vast, mechanical behemoths many years ago deep in the ground of our fair planet so that they can take over many years later (a time line the patronising narrator tells us) bother going to all that trouble when they could've just got set up when they came to put said machines down in the first place!?! And why weren't they destroyed by the same bacteria that did for them when they returned? Oh and bacteria aren't the smallest organisms on the planet.
This has been a long tirade of negativity but War of the Worlds is still, despite my rating, worth a look. It's long, poorly thought out and recklessly indulgent of its director's desire to be different. On the other hand it is a Spielberg film and does have many of his high quality trademarks: film making flare, visual understanding, extreme tension building, a John Williams score, an actor being an unexpectedly human hero and other such things.
However, by comparison to much of his other work, it falls way short. A lot was made in the pre-release notes about how quickly this film was made, some (Spielberg himself) suggesting that the whole thing was a crazy proposition. It seems to me that he was a lot closer to that mark than intended and the film sorely needed some re-scripts and re-shoots to cover up some disappointing continuity and pacing problems.
Still, compared to Star Wars episode three, not to mention the not-so-Fantastic Four, it ranks as one of the better blockbusters this summer. Unfortunately, it seems that the best Hollywood has come up with recently falls way short of what went before. Over the next few years we may well see the Summer Blockbuster becoming the Christmas Art-house Classic as the balance of power shifts to a younger breed of talented directors... all I can say is roll up King Kong!