Spielberg blends his peccadilloes, blockbuster style.

Rating: 8/10 (6 June 2010)

Divorced dad Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) has his two kids, Rachel (Dakota Fanning) & Robbie (Justin Chatwin), staying with him for the weekend. Already feeling inconvenienced due to his parental inadequacies, things are further complicated by the arrival of aliens, who after a lighting storm awakes them from the earth, start to lay waste to America.
Having failed to ignite the box office in his customary way with his last two directorial outings (The Terminal & Catch Me If You Can ), Steven Spielberg, arguably played safe with his next film. Re-teaming with mega star Tom Cruise, Spielberg decided to put his take on the much lauded source material written by H.G. Wells, The War Of The Worlds. Armed with a budget of $132 million and with Josh Friedman & David Koepp adapting, Spielberg promptly made a movie that Worldwide grossed $591,745,540.
As is nearly always the way with Spielberg's movies tho, the film has proved to be most divisive. Likewise, as with nearly every alien invasion movie ever made, War Of The Worlds couldn't hope to appease a majority of genre compliant observers. Too cheap (Earth Vs The Flying Saucers), too brainless (Independence Day) and too talky (Signs), just some of the complaints to have come the way of other genre attempts. Spielberg, obviously aware of such things since he loves this little offshoot of the sci-fi market, tries to cover all bases. The result being what ultimately is a well crafted, intelligent and thrilling movie that is a collection of his favourite movie material. You can tick off the Spielberg conventions as you go. For the first hour as Cruise and kids try to evade the marauding tripods, the film is exhilarating, with no expense spared and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski shooting it with a moody tint so befitting the material. While the effects work is top dollar and worth the admission fee alone. Where the film suffers in the view of many is for its final third, where it slows to an almost standstill as Spielberg and co try to make sense of it all, the post 9/11 feel cranking its head to peer out from the gloom. To be fair, Wells' own novel ending is hardly brilliant as it is, but Koepp and the bearded one test the patience big time here with a very unsatisfactory conclusion. You can see why lots of multiplex visitors felt a little cheated having invested a couple of hours of their time. The young actors are merely OK, borderline annoying at times, they do enough to make the fragmented family on the run dynamic work, while Cruise drops in one of his "professional" performances. Other than those we get a bizarre little turn from Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman naturally does the narration.
Not prime stuff from one of our finest cinematic entertainers, but much to admire and enjoy: even if it continues a run of weak endings that threatens to dethrone him as the blockbuster king. 7.5/10