excellent!

Rating: 8/10 (3 January 2006)

Everyone's always complaining about how Hollywood's been infected with the remake syndrome as of late, and yes, it does in many ways represent a lack of creativity in filmmakers and an unwillingness to take risks on the part of movie bigwigs. But there's something else that drives a heck of a lot of remakes nowadays. Directors that remember the movies that had an effect on them growing up, and want to pay tribute to them, bring them to a new generation of moviegoers, or simply do them justice by today's standards. Such is the case with Steven Spielberg's take on H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds.
Steven Spielberg knows how to handle big stories and he knows how to ground them in human moments. But the truth is, I don't think it matters how you feel about Steven Spielberg or Tom Cruise because this version of War of the Worlds will still kick your ass halfway into next week. Within the first 10 minutes, it pulls you in and never lets go. The movie is kinetic and intense and gripping in every sense. At times the camera-work is erratic and hand-held, other times it swoops and rotates around at impossible angles. The camera stays close to the ground, hovering near the main characters at all times, keeping us at their level and focused on their emotions. We are trapped inside this family's story of survival and tugged along at a breakneck pace.
The decision to add the 2 children to the story is a Spielberg-ism that is likely to have some purists up in arms. However, American family values aside, it just makes the main character even more desperate to survive and adds to the tension. Sometimes child actors can be annoying, but both Dakota Fanning and Justin Chatwin did a decent job. The son, Robbie (Chatwin), comes off at first as the typical Gen-X teenager who hates his divorced father, but he doesn't go too far overboard with the angst and still makes us identify with him. Dakota Fanning on the other hand is endearing, and although she seems like she's going to be that annoying kid who is wiser han anyone her age should ever be, she ends up simply "reacting" more than acting.
Tom Cruise's hammy tendencies, on the other hand, might make you crack a smile a few times, but it never gets out of hand. He does a surprisingly good job of playing the average joe as opposed to the all-American hero for once.
War of the Worlds combines the post-apocalyptic awe of 28 Days Later, and some of the taut nail-biting moments of M. Night Shyamalan's own alien terror flick, Signs. One thing people seem to forget about War of the Worlds (perhaps a result of the now dated 1953 movie), is that Orson Welles once caused mass pandemonium when he did a radio broadcast based on the book. It was scary stuff. The concept of invaders from outer space is indeed a frightening one, and one that Spielberg proves can still be chilling even today if we are given the proper cues. There are some disturbing images in this movie (okay, only PG-13 disturbing), and yet at the same time it is often what we don't see (or can't see clearly) that gets under our skin the most.
This is a movie that could have crumbled under the sheer weight of computer generated effects. However, nothing looked awkward or obviously fake. I loved the look of the tripods in this film, as they maintained their old 50's-style design without seeming cheesy or out of place. The aliens themselves were creepy and menacing and yes, a thousand times cooler looking than those skinny future robot thingies in A.I.
The thing that floors me the most about this movie is that it was shot on such a tight schedule. Every scene seems to have been executed with such forethought and precision, and the effects integrated flawlessly, and yet the entire production was finished in less than 10 months. Maybe the ending seemed a little abrupt, but still, if that isn't proof of Spielberg's mastery of cinema, I don't know what is.
Some people are going to say that Steven Spielberg is offering a commentary on 9/11, but I don't know about that. He's just grounding it in realism, in the here and now. You can interpret it any way you like, but I think all Spielberg has done is taken a classic story, modernized it, upped the intensity, and injected some depth into the characters. Unlike similar disaster-type movies you might see by Roland Emmerich, this one will stay with you long after the credits have rolled because you feel like you actually lived it. It's blockbusters like these that remind you why you love going to the movies in the first place.