Almost - but not quite...

Rating: 6/10 (24 December 2005)

Although I enjoyed this film, I felt that it was somewhat overshadowed by the film "Independance Day" of a few years earlier. It lacks the entertainment value of that earlier film, perhaps because it tries to be too serious and lacks humour.
The first part of the film, with the invasion coming, and the panic that ensues as people try to escape, is scary and extremely well done. Excellent special effects, of course, which are now a required standard in a movie of this calibre. The rest of the movie is OK, although the action scenes with Tom Cruise go overboard, and the scene in the cellar was better done in the earlier 1950's version. Just why there had to be a lunatic down their who Tom Cruise had to kill, I don't know. It added nothing to the movie.
Apart from being updated to the 21st Century, the film sticks pretty closely to H.G. Wells' classic 19th Century Novel "The War of the Worlds". And therein lies the problem with the plot. The idea of aliens invading earth, and then getting destroyed by bacteria which we humans have become immune to, but which the aliens overlooked, may have been acceptable and new back for the audeinces of 1897, but for a 2005 audience it doesn't wash. We know aliens are cleverer thatn that!
In the original 1897 book, we humans have no power to stop the invasion - and so it is in this film. No Wil Smith or Bruce Willis to save the world. Plots like this aren't good for the popcorn market, so I guess that's why Hollywood threw in the Tom Cruise heroics.
For me, the movie is a curious mixture of 19th Century visionary science fiction and 21st century Hollywood action, and doesn't quite come off.