Wet Firecracker

Rating: Null/10 (7 July 2005)

One of the most memorable experiences I've had at a movie theater was the first time I saw "Saving Private Ryan". The relentless action and horror of the Omaha Beach sequence left me in open mouthed amazement. Spielberg has always been a master at creating memorable imagery, from the runaway Ferris wheel in "1941" to the boys flying on their bikes in front of the moon in "ET". But the opening of "Ryan" surpassed anything he had done with the medium of film. Not so co-incidentally, "SPR" was rated R.
Of course, Spielberg has made stinkers like "Lost World" and "A.I.", too. Lazy, sloppy, disjointed snoozers. Add "War Of The Worlds" to that list. What's so maddening is that sometimes the movie that might have been is glimpsed. The first tripod rising from its subterranean lair is a compelling sequence, and I thought the film was going to take off on a series of ever mounting action scenes. But the whole thing reminded me of a wet firecracker. You light the fuse, and feel the anticipation of the explosion. But it just sits there, inert. You think, "It's just a slight delay. It'll go off." After a while you realize you got ripped off. This firecracker is made from a soggy rag of a script wrapped around the stale gunpowder of a once potent talent too lazy to exploit the resources at his command.
I think a big part of the problem is that this movie is hobbled with a PG-13 rating. This is a war movie. Of course it's going to deal with gruesome death and horror. So why bother making this film if the graphic content is defanged out of a fear of offending old ladies in the audience? It's like turning Goya's "Disasters Of War" etchings into a coloring book suitable for the tender sensibilities of third graders.