Surprisingly Excellent

Rating: Null/10 (16 July 2005)

I admit I had low expectations going into this: I am not an especial fan of Mr. Spielberg, find Tom Cruise to be a gifted but limited actor, and don't understand the fuss over Dakota Fanning. I'm not a huge fan of alien invasion stories and figured this would be very thin gruel all around.
In fact, it's genuinely excellent, easily the best of the Summer movies I've seen in 2005. Unusually hard-edged and rough, with clear references to 9/11 -- I found the usually pro-forma shots of cities being destroyed unusually powerful. Cruise is a very fallible "hero", we never get much more than a small piece of the whole story (which I found exceptionally believable). For the most part the kids behave believably. Certain moments of mass hysteria (especially the van sequence) are as hard as anything I've seen from Spielberg. A couple of small but niggling weaknesses, but all in all a remarkable achievement.