Good outweighs bad

Rating: 7/10 (3 July 2005)

Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds is an impressive, realistic and pretty disturbing world of terror. He created a world so much violent and disturbing that I have no idea how this film could get only PG-13 rating. His view of disaster is far different from almost bloodless and sterile Roland Emmerich's Independence Day and Day After Tomorrow and other similar movies. As one of the movie's characters said all that happens in the movie is not a war, it is an extermination. All the achievements of human civilization are useless and cannot protect humans from invasion. So people are leaving on their own and as always in some of them bad times awake the best, and some of them the worst. For main character Ray, played by Tom Cruise, the only goal is protecting his two kids and surviving. The theme of the family relations in such difficult moments that was implanted into the storyline is very important in the movie. All three main characters are well written and developed. Tom Cruise is good as a father, who all the time should make decisions trying to protect his children. Surely he is not perfect here but I think it is completely his type of a hero and I can hardly imagine another actor in that role. Two children, Robbie and Rachel (rebel teenager and his younger sister) were played by Justin Chatwin and Dakota Fanning. To me Robbie's character is the most interesting in the movie. I really doubt that it was really necessary to use twenty three years old for playing sixteen years old but in any case it is obviously that Justin Chatwin did excellent job playing his character. At the same time I can't share all praises about Dakota Fanning. She was good enough but nothing extraordinary. Among other supporting cast only Tim Robbins is worth for mentioning but his dark character is very similar to his role in Mystic River. Personally I liked the way of using special effects in the movie. They are very impressive, practically all the time they are in the right place creating the strong atmosphere of terror and destruction all around. But the most important is that they have been created to show this invaded and shattered world at eyes Ray and his family, not at some abstracted view as most directors do with only purpose to impress audience with cool but senseless visual effects. Turning back to the movie's plot I have to admit that with close look it is possible to find some minor plot holes and logical variances. Fortunately all such minor drawbacks are always somewhere in the background because all attention is riveted on Cruise and children. During the entire movie without any exception we can see only what they see, we know what's going on and about this invasion and aliens only what they know. So Spielberg War of the Words is much more the story of an ordinary family during alien invasion which must unite and surpass own problems and misunderstanding than story of Earth being invaded by aliens. That's why Spielberg's War of The World works so good and makes so strong impression.
Taking all above mentioned into account watching War of the Worlds I was sure that it is a very good movie, definitely one of the best this year. Until the ending. It was incredibly unsatisfying and came so abruptly that I was so much confused and I could hardly believe my eyes. Of course it is possible to find some grounds, philosophical and other points of such an ending but anyway it's not work here. Completely does not work. Despite that I suppose that several hardly explicable minutes of the ending can't outweighs all positive in this film. Definitely it's still worth seeing but think twice before taking young kids with you. With better ending or at least with same but more developed ending I would rate War of the Worlds 9 out of 10. Overall my rating is 7.2 out of 10.
Sorry for my bad English.