This is a close encounter of the best kind

Rating: 10/10 (16 April 2006)

H.G. Wells' famous novel, War of the Worlds, has been done many times before; a radio broadcast, a movie in the 50's, an 80's TV series, an online comic and even a 70's musical, yes, that's right, a musical! Now it's Steven Spielberg's turn. Spielberg previously worked with aliens from outer space in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T., but now Spielbergio has shed that whole "aliens are cute" theory and thrown it right into the shredder. In War of the Worlds the aliens are relentless killing machines.
The film follows Ray (Cruise), a full-time blue-collar dock worker and part-time dead-beat dad, whose kids are more of a weekend hassle for him than real family members. As it turns out it's his turn to watch the kids (Rachel and Robbie) this weekend while their mother and step-father head up to Boston to visit family. Everything seemed to be going just about normal for this family that is until all hell breaks loose when an alien invasion suddenly sprouts up out of the ground, literally! The aliens' tripods rise out of the ground and start blasting people left and right with lasers causing them to burst into ashes. From this moment on the rest of the film is one big spectacle of amazing special effects, booming surround sound and total anarchy; which echoes imagery of 9/11 and the Holocaust.
The film was written by David Koepp who previously worked with Spielberg on Jurassic Park. The performances are real, and pretty believable, not a single one stuck out, or bothered me at all. I can understand why Rachel would scream so much she's only ten and people are getting killed all around her! I can understand why Robbie hates his father, and wants to fight back, he's young and rebellious. And I can understand Harlan, the nut-case trapped in the basement with a shotgun yearning to lead a surprise attack on the aliens. The cinematography is a little weak, at one moment it looks cold and steely and next it's gritty and a little fuzzy, but it's pretty much the same old Spielberg style that he's used since Saving Private Ryan. And some of the tricks played in the basement seemed like they were ripped straight from the Jurassic Park screenplay (Raptors in the kitchen anyone?).
For many people they'll just sit down and watch War of the Worlds and look at it as just another alien invasion flick, and on the surface it might look like just another "survive the alien attack!" movie, but I think it's really deeper than that. Just like Spielberg's Artificial Intelligence, War of the Worlds might just have flown a little too high, over many peoples radars. As much as the film may look like a film about how we will survive an alien invasion, it's also about how will we, as humans, be able to survive ourselves, and how we'll either come together to help our survival (like the scene where Robbie tries to help people climb onto the ferry), or how we'll end up fighting ourselves (like the crazy mob that takes over the van). It's just as much about how they survived the aliens as how they were able to survive each other, and by setting the main characters up as a broken or "warring" family only helps the plot even more.
In Wells' novel it was about one man returning home to find his wife (who he thought was killed in the invasion) alive and well, even though he had already assumed and pretty much already accepted that she was already dead. This is pretty true to the book, they only changed it do Ray's son instead of his wife. Many people complain about this plot twist, saying it was unnecessary, but if you know Wells' novel it is essential. We never see Robbie killed; we simply accept it or assume it. Notice a group of retreating humvees leaving the hill (some are on fire); now think about it carefully. You assume Robbie is dead or has been killed by the explosion, but you can't sure about that, because like Ray you didn't see all of what happened, so it is possible that he could have escaped the alien attack just in time it is possible. Sure it's an assumption, but it's not any more right or wrong than assuming that he is already dead.
The original '52 War of the Worlds film was an analogy for nuclear war, because nuclear war was considered "the huge threat" at that time, and in Spielberg's film the alien invasion is an analogy for terrorism in a post-9/11 world. There are tons of references to this through out the film; the posting of pictures of family member that are missing as a way of searching to find one another, "Is it the terrorists?" Robbie asks Ray when their neighborhood is being obliterated; a smoldering plane wreck reminded me of United Flight 93. And if you watch the scene where Robbie supposedly dies on the hill from "the explosion", look carefully at the left side of the screen during this scene and you can see the image of one of the Twin Towers smoking, I'm not joking, it's really there, look carefully. And then of course there's the reference that Harlan makes about how "occupations never last", which is clearly a reference to the Iraq War. I've seen the film many times and I still don't think I've caught all the references, but every time I sit down and watch this film the more I notice things in it, whether done intentionally or not I don't know, but one thing I know for sure is that Spielberg isn't an idiot just trying to blow stuff up, but to also allow us to think a little bit. Simply put; different people see different things, and it's up to the individual to determine what it is that they really see.