Spielberg can't make sense of 9/11/2001

Rating: 8/10 (12 July 2005)

The film I saw with a sparse matinée crowd here in southwest Michigan reminded of better treatments that offered audiences surprise, novelty, and more toned-down pleasant amazement. This, after all, is the same filmmaker who brought us CLOSE_ENCOUNTERS_OF_THE_THIRD_KIND and E.T. in his heyday and now that he is a "message" director he apparently felt he could team with hyperactive celebrity/mogul Tom Cruise and bring some sort of answers to our troubled times of war and terrorism. For those of you deciding whether or not to see the film, I'd recommend to wait for the DVD release. It cannot see "forest for the trees" of its visually overstimulated usage of effects like all our worst nightmares (tornadoes, mass transit cataclysms, spy intercept and machine killing technology, earthquakes, even some U.S. military impotence against foes that won't surrender!). The scenes that deal with the wrecked planes and missing persons' posters were heart-wrenching for those of us for whom September 11, 2001 is still a foundational date of destiny. Shame on you, Mr. Spielberg for trying to insinuate something about destroyers "buried" ready for activation (sleeper cells of the al Qaeda variety) and the young boy/rebel thinking that joining vigilante-style in the Army/Reserve assault that seems rather disorganized and knee-jerk will "solve" the confrontation between the destroyers and those about to be destroyed. This film certainly was apparently rushed in some ways to meet a "gap" in the Hollywood schedule as far as a 2005 blockbuster. Its "framework" narration does give one pause. Certainly for those of us aware of the levels of material utilized by those drawing on past versions of this tale of the 1890's by H.G. Wells the WAR is won by forces humanity has taken for granted, apart from any sort of prayerful plea for help like the 1950s version of the WAR. Maybe this S. Spielberg creation will look better to me later when I see it and can stop and start the puzzling sequences. For me, a 8* out of 10*.