Contrived: Too many coincidences

Rating: 4/10 (17 August 2005)

Despite all the reviews which criticized focusing the H.G. Wells story through the eyes of a deadbeat Dad desperate to protect his children, I liked that element of the film. The simple story of a man trying to win over and protect his two children was just enough humanity to bring the pathos of the story to the forefront. But in the final analysis, neither this heart-wrenching humanity nor the very good SFX are enough to make this film a masterpiece. I don't think this is the kind of film that will stick with me, about which I will keep thinking.
Today's audiences seem more interested in spectacle than depth, more interested in the next gag than something of meaning, that is, until given something of meaning. Perhaps this is the nature of consumerism. Audiences become blasé, inured to visuals, sounds, and sensations that are "in their faces." And they grow weary of something that doesn't delight either immediately or doesn't generate a new and better delight every four seconds. But not to sell audiences short because when they are given something of real value, they know it, they recognize it, and often, it establishes a new standard by which they will judge everything else.
War of the Worlds is the flavor-of-the-week, but it's neither powerful enough to last nor engaging enough to elicit further thought. It does not stick to the bones.
Thankfully, Spielberg may have realized this mediocrity and moves quickly from establishing Ray (Tom Cruise) as hard-working crane operator (a skill he should have used later in the film against the aliens), who must care for his kids for a weekend when his now pregnant ex-wife and her new hubbie are off to Boston, to a father in full protection mode as the tripods emerge from the ground and begin to vaporize everyone and everything.
The children Rachel (Dakota Fanning) and Robbie (Justin Chatwin) are interesting characters with whom we don't get to spend nearly enough time. Rachel is a high-strung, worry-wort, though we don't know why or much about how she functions aside from how she deals with splinters and defines her personal space for safety. Robbie is easier to understand. He's the typical disgruntled teen who hates or pretends to hate his Dad. He's best defined by his strong bond with his sister, which makes it all the more puzzling when the boy insists on watching the army try to stop the tripods, leaving Ray to choose between his son, who wants to walk into certain death, and his daughter being carted away by two well meaning adults who think she's been abandoned.
Robbie's insistence that his father let him go seems too contrived and convenient, as if Spielberg couldn't figure out what to do with the character after his sister chides him for trying to go off with the army the first time. And it is hard to see how Robbie would fit in the scenes in which Tim Robbins shows up in a brilliant cameo as Harlan Oglivy. The dynamic in which Ray must kill Harlan to avoid being detected by the aliens, a hiding tactic which doesn't work anyway (again, too conveniently), would be a completely different scenario with his son there. Also, the story needed a goal. The trek to Boston to reunite with ex-wife and mommy Mary Ann (Miranda Otto) is made all the more important and thus poignant because "Robbie is going to meet us there," even though Ray watched as the tripods blasted the hill where he left his son into a rolling fireball, and so we really have little hope for Robbie's survival. How Robbie survives is another of the film's many unanswered questions. At least, The Day After Tomorrow (another father saves son epic) had the dual story lines of the father's trek and the son's survival.
Here, Spielberg seems handcuffed by Ray's story, which may be from where the criticisms of the story came. By telling the tale through the father's eyes, he gets the human element, the heart-tweaks and teary eyes, but it's not Independence Day. Much of what is going on with the aliens is not explained and their eventual defeat must be dealt with, much like Wells did, with a postscript. Still, it's intriguing to see an invasion like this from the perspective of an uninformed character, who would not have the benefit of exposition to explain what's happening to him and to the world. Though Ray does meet a news crew early on who show him some tape footage before high-tailing away. But other directors would make the news people into characters.
There's also many laughable convenient coincidences. Like when a jet plane crashes into the house where he and his kids are hiding, the wreckage somehow destroys everything around it except the van Ray stole. Likewise, basement doors do not become blocked with wreckage, and the cage that blows off the tripod conveniently breaks apart like an egg so everyone can get free instead of remaining intact and keeping all hopelessly imprisoned. At least, Ray's and Rachel's survival (Robbie really shouldn't have survived) is not too coincidental to be believable. After all this is a story about those who survived, not those who died.
The SFX are definitely worth another look. It's a great re-imagining of the classic SF story and the 1950s film. But it's not the greatest alien invasion film ever made, not even the best one Spielberg's ever done.