Spielberg Once Again Makes Us Think

Rating: 9/10 (1 July 2005)

Enjoyable, creative, well cast, well directed, tight human drama set to a spooky sci-fi background. That pretty much sums it up and I don't want to ruin any surprises. Spielberg is a master at what he does and captures genuine emotion from his cast rather than the overdone: "Hand me that gun and let's go get these suckas" take on man versus space baddies so prevalent in films lately ('Independence Day','AVP', anyone? Bleh.). Spielberg also towers over other directors of apocalyptic near future stories like Armageddon, Deep Impact, etc. He demonstrates the keen sense of character development so prevalent in all of his films and continues to explore what happens to ordinary people in particularly extra-ordinary circumstances. As always this is fun (is that the right word?) to watch and Tom Cruise gives one of his best performances (all my feelings about his very public personal life aside). Dakota Fanning is also superb in her role as Cruise's 8 or so year old daughter. She is the strongest child actor I have seen in a long while and presents a very convincing and multi-faceted performance. Overall, classic Spielberg Sci-Fi. One of his best. I thought it had all of the great buildup we saw in Minority Report and AI without the "My goodness, is this movie still running?" feeling associated with watching the latter. As with those two movies, it should be apparent to Spielberg fans that he's drifted from the nicey-nice movies of yesteryear ("Raiders of the Lost Ark","E.T.") and does explore some material that is inappropriate for the PG crowd (Hence the PG-13), but the worst of the violence is implied and off screen (Ala that guy who gets the propeller in "Raiders"). Though there are several mass vaporizations, hurtling burning vehicles, crumbling architecture, other perilous situations, and a bit of gore, Spielberg focuses more on building the tension from what you don't see (Ala M. Night Shaylaman's "Signs"), but you know is happening just outside that basement window, or door or what have you. If you like Spielberg's work you will definitely not be disappointed with his most recent endeavor.