A long way from Roy Neary and Elliott in every sense of the term.

Rating: 8/10 (29 July 2005)

"War of the Worlds" is almost enough to make you - or me, anyway - wish that Steven Spielberg only ever did science fiction movies. I say almost because if that were the case, we wouldn't have "Amistad" (one of his most underrated works), "Saving Private Ryan," "Catch Me If You Can," "The Color Purple," "Duel," "Schindler's List," or his upcoming movie about the Munich Olympics massacre. The man has many gifts, even if comedy isn't necessarily one of them.
Though this movie is pretty much on a big scale, it still seems surprisingly intimate (or as intimate as a movie where large tripods from outer space vaporize hundreds of people can be). This is because Spielberg and adaptors John Friedman and David Koepp never change the movie's point of view from that of dockworker Tom Cruise and his daughter Dakota Fanning as they go on their journey to try and escape the Martians (they do have another relative along, but he's taken out of the movie for a while before the third act - since Justin Chatwin's performance isn't on a level with Cruise's or especially Fanning's, this is just as well).
The result is that other than Tim Robbins's survivalist, none of the people they encounter en route get much time to make an impression, but that only adds to the feel of the movie, and makes it seem more like the true anti-"Independence Day" that some claimed "Mars Attacks!" was. No alien-human dogfights here; most of the attacks are futile, and a number of scenes that have "major setpiece" written all over them either take place offscreen - we don't see the invaders bring down a passenger plane, but only the aftermath - or are almost in the background; this has its most effective payoff in one scene where Cruise is forced to take action against the more extreme Robbins, with us experiencing it from Fanning's perspective (she doesn't actually see it, and neither do we) and only John Williams' striking (and extremely non-hummable - no five-note alien messages or soaring flying-by-the-moon melodies here) score to give us an idea of what's happening.
It may not be as exhilarating as "Independence Day," and certainly not as heavy on the humour (though there is some - when Cruise tells his daughter to order out for dinner and finds she's sent out for hummus, he reasonably points out "I meant food"), but it genuinely brings over the horror of how a normal day can suddenly turn into a fight for survival. It may not be "the terrorists," as Fanning asks when the attacks begin, but it could well have been, so it works as something to bring on thought and as an exercise in thrills (one sequence with Cruise, Fanning and Robbins in a basement with one of the aliens' sensors seeking them out is particularly tense). Some have complained about the ending, but emotionally it's pretty much on a par with what's come before - even the tide-turning isn't all that excessive. "War of the Worlds" isn't Spielberg's best movie, but it's a return to form after "The Terminal."
And Robbins' character is right; this isn't a war. It's an extermination.