War of a Very Small World

Rating: 4/10 (9 July 2005)

"It all happened without me. Absent always." These Beckettian sentiments apply to the POV of Spielberg's underachieving "War of the Worlds" remake. It feels like we are watching a subplot cut from the actual movie. If Mel Gibson was the star, you can be sure that the son's character would be vaporized, leaving Mel with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch to exact bloody vengeance upon the extraterrestrial interlopers. In this one we simply watch the son act petulant over and over, Dakota Fanning scream over and over and over and over, and Tom Cruise's eyes tear up with emotion he lacks the means to convey, a nifty trick to get around the fact that he can't really act.
***Spoilers Ahoy!*** So Tom Cruise is forced to kill Tim Robbins because he won't shut up. So some feel that way about Robbin's politics (as we are reminded by every moron in the world bootstrapped onto Chris Rock's Oscar night barbs), but for the sake of humanity whatever happened to rope, a chair, and a gag? The screenwriters seem eager to cash out their moments before they have accrued sufficient returns, or interest. A credit for story on the clunker "Chain Reaction" should send up flags. He also (Josh Friedman) has a script consultation credit for "Hitchhiker's"is he responsible for the awfully handled love story in that one? "Sahara" too. This guy has a hell of a track record. It looks like David Koepp's contribution was to take things out so there is almost no dialogue. The extermination scenes are surprisingly disturbing and vile, and presented with no editorializing. Instead of feeling mature, this instead feels like their full impact was not comprehended and they picked most of the images because they looked cool, you drink that human blood, martian! Several fine actors are featured for mere moments: Danny Hoch or someone that looks a lot like him (he isn't listed in the cast) as a cop, Daniel Franzese is in it for a minute, Rick Gonzales from "The Rookie" doesn't even get a name, Mariann Mayberry from Steppenwolf I didn't even recognize on screen, but she's credited. Morgan Freeman is becoming the James Earl Jones of narration.
The leads do not fare so well. Robbie looks like Jason Mraz and does not much with not much, the scene where he runs off into the fray is pitifully anticlimactic; I can't but think someone must have been embarrassed on the day they shot that ("is this actually going in the movie?"). Dakota Fanning enlarges upon her screen library of neuroses: here she is a claustrophobic with back problems that screams uncontrollably, she's like a cute little blond old Jewish man, Woody Allen is on line 2. Cruise is Cruise, when isn't he? Maybe he looks a little nuts at times, buthe is a little nuts, maybe more than a little. Tim Robbins part is a plot device and not a human being. Miranda Otto looks like a slightly animated cloven pine. Her beau Tim (david alan basche) is embalmed.
Everything from the most gruesome to the most inconsequential is observed with the same strange detachment and lack of affect, translating into lack of effect. This movie just feels really inconsequential. The ending is so peremptory and ridiculous: in this day and age it seems hard to buy that they buried the ships there but never thought about bacteria. Maybe back when the book was written and antiseptic was still as novel as the iPod is today. Maybe there is still a good movie to be made from this material, but this sure as heck ain't it.
At least it avoided the baseball bat scene from "Signs."