Not really a War of the Worlds, but rather watch character running from alien death machines with family in tow.

Rating: 7/10 (30 June 2005)

It had its moments, but along with those it also had its faults...a lot of em. I enjoyed it for the most part, but there are so many scientific errors just one person can take. Even if you could disregard them all the action just about stops once Ray and his daughter enters the basement with the crazy Tim Robbins character. First what is good? The first moments of alien encounter when the tripods emerge from the ground and begin incinerating everyone and everything. The destruction as Cruise and family escape one step ahead of the tripods in the only working vehicle. Moments of humor as the family arrives at the mother's house. The destruction shown as planes apparently crashed in the night. A ferry boat ride of death. All this makes for really entertaining theater, but there are just too many faults to rate this a really good movie. In fact, so far it is one of the weakest movies I have seen so far this year. Why? Well for some reason all electrical appliances are knocked out, even watches yet somehow a video camera is still functioning? For some reason the family has the only working car yet the military vehicles work fine and many areas are still with power so the cars in those areas should work right? The aliens vaporize some people, but then capture others? Just what was the point of the red vines, granted it made for a rather creepy scene with Cruise's character looking out over a field, but in the end it just seemed to make for a rather pointless plot cul de sac. Then there is the scenes with Robbin's character, that quite frankly bog the movie down to a stand still. The basement scene went on way to long, I am guessing it was there to keep down costs as while they were in the basement they were also saving money by not having to show us the destruction caused by the tripods. Still though up to that point there were some nice action scenes and such, but still not up to par with movies that cost a fraction of the money such as "Land of the Dead" made for 15 million, it looks just as impressive in places as this 135 million dollar movie. It needs more, more stars, more perspective than what we get. This movie just looks at one family's struggle during an alien invasion, unfortunately that has been done before in a movie called "Signs". There is really nothing new being brought to the table here.