It's not a war, it's an extermination - of talent on screen!

Rating: 6/10 (4 July 2005)

Before I even start on the review - I believe that the man named Spielberg has brought more path breaking movies to mainstream cinema than any director anywhere on the planet. Movies that make us smile, cry and gape in wondrous entertainment. And more importantly - movies that sometimes make us think.
War of the Worlds is definitely not the latter.
The premise of the movie is razor thin simple. Aliens who've planning extermination of the Human race for more than a million years finally decide to move into the implementation stage of their mega-project (Maybe the funding for the war was tough to come by on their home planet. Alien government procedures, if anything, would be presumably more complex!). Logically their observation and study of humans would not make so much sense. As a man named Darwin put it (in slightly different words) - a path in natural history could have ensured Aliens would have had to fight T-Rexes instead of soft puny humans. But, I guess the tripods would have blasted the T-Rexes out of oblivion too.
The-most-saleable-face-in-Hollywood-cinema is a blue collared worker (despite the character being obnoxious and harsh on his kids, the girl sitting with me ended up saying - so cute! I guess Mr. Cruise does have his advantage right there). Now, saving his kids, saving his life and fleeing the Tripods that burst out of the ground are top on Tom's list of To-Dos. In typical Hollywood panache (which hasn't changed much for the 100 years when we puny humans started making movies) he does all three! He gives a controlled performance - Thank you for that Tom. Dakota Fanning does a good job too. All critics I've read are raving about her performance - but honestly, am I the only one who found her continual shrieking annoying? Then again I've never met a 10 year old kid fleeing alien tripods with an estranged dad - so maybe that's what they do.
The best-director-in-the-world does get one thing bang on target - the human drama. The interaction between the estranged father, the newly pregnant with someone else's child mom, the kids who do not have any regard for their biological dad are real. It's nice to see real. Even if it is in the background of the human race trying to flee from blood sucking tripods.
There are some gaping gaps in the story line. For instance, the aliens who're technologically advanced enough to build force fields, undetectable anti-rust tripods deep within Earth's surface and invisible mother ships forgot to invent one thing - Gas Masks! Jeez - tough luck that they plan their invasion on a planet which has more microbes than humans. Another one - they're drawing human blood for some reason - food, drink or maybe even radiator coolant for their Tripods. Wouldn't you expect alien guys (who, BTW as we are often reminded, have been planning this for a million years) to have subsidiary material for all this during an invasion? And if they somehow where biologically stupid enough to do this (I told you - I love that Spielberg guy! I'll give him the benefit of doubt any day) wouldn't a sensible military tactic be to send a first wave of soldiers to an unknown terrain - and then depending on the success of the initial wave bring in the full force to wipe puny humans clean? Ask any soldier anywhere on the planet.
But, at the end of the day - its a movie. We're not supposed to ask too many questions like that. Some say it's great that the book is "true" to the book. The very term - "remake" or even "based upon" mean that it has to improvise on the original. If you would like to be so true to the book then set it in 1890s when the book was written. Mr. Wells would've radically changed a "re-write" of his book had he lived today.
War of the worlds is entertaining. That's what counts. But, a request tough - do not package and market movies as something they are not. When I went to see Independence Day a decade ago, I knew exactly what to expect (and I enjoyed it!). That did not happen with WOTW. For all you critics who have panned ID4 with the cheesy Feel-good-American ending - girls running towards victorious guys and hugs/kisses follow. Please revisit your reviews after seeing the ending here.
See the movie. It's a summer time blockbuster. And that's all it is.