Next failure of the greatest dreamer

Rating: 5/10 (30 June 2005)

First of all I would like to say that I was a great fan of Spielberg films. That's why I still call him the greatest dreamer, although not all of his work was my cup of tea. As time passed and I grew older I got more and more annoyed by the endings. Starting with Schindler, almost all the endings were so naive as written and directed by some old weeping lady passing her sixties. WOTW is unfortunately the same case. I am not a film critic, I am screenwriter, so usually I keep my right to remain silent. But not this time. WOTW was an insult to me, not only personally as to paying viewer, but also as an insult to all filmmakers. Welles wrote a magnificent book and no one was able to film it properly. Then Spielberg came - and made it a crap.
WOTW has some strong moments, like the burning train, or the landscape bleeding with red roots. But they just can't overweight the silly ones. That means NOT just the ending - main characters hugging each other after surviving extraterrestrial holocaust, watched by relatives which survived in Boston (why Boston remains almost untouched, anyway) can be bearable if the script is good. And it's NOT good. Koepp did a miserable job. For example - the scene with Tim Robbins is just badly written and the moment when Cruise slays him just seems that he did it just for his daughter. In the book main character just don't have any other chance to survive. Cruise has plenty of chances and when he is finally trapped, good soldier and good people around get together to save him. That's just stupid, not silly, STUPID.
To cut it short - not even great budget and great director can make great film from the great book. When I left the cinema with my friends we were glad that LOTR was made by Peter Jackson and not by Spielberg. With his approach the Tolkien Trilogy could be just like another Hook.
5/10 just because I liked his work ten years ago