War of the Worlds Review
by Rick Ferguson (filmgeek65 AT hotmail DOT com)July 6th, 2005
How much did I dig WAR OF THE WORLDS? I've seen it twice already. Saw it on opening night, by myself, while my wife was out gallivanting with the girls; saw it again the next night, with the wife at my side. That's the first time this year I've seen a picture twice in the theater. I sure as hell wasn't interested in seeing REVENGE OF THE SITH a second time; the moment I saw Darth Vader cavorting with M&Ms on TV, I was done with George Lucas. I didn't even see BATMAN BEGINS twice, and I dug that movie immensely. Haven't felt the urge to double-dip, actually, since RETURN OF THE KING.
Frankly, I wasn't prepared for how much this movie blew my mind. The last picture to plaster me against the back wall of the theater the way this one did was THE MATRIX. That, at age 59, Steven Spielberg can still grab you by the balls and yank you into the screen with this much piss and vinegar is nothing short of astounding. Why he's dicking around with pointless exercises like THE TERMINAL, when he could be making more pictures like this one, is beyond me.
WAR OF THE WORLDS is the first pure popcorn thriller to enter the Spielberg canon since JURASSIC PARK. It exists merely as an exercise in tension and release; it has no moral or message other than to show us that, hey, if aliens really did attack us with nightmarish tripod-mounted war machines equipped with lethal disintegration rays, then it would suck to be us. Spielberg succeeds at this task so well that he has once again schooled his contemporaries on how to direct the 21st Century action-adventure epic. Lucas, Michael Bay or any of those indie hipsters who sell out to helm the new "Aquaman" movie can do nothing but sit hunched in the back of the class and take notes.
The film is designed both as an adaptation of the seminal H.G. Wells novel and a tribute to the 1953 classic produced by the legendary George Pal. The setup introduces us to New Jersey dockworker Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise), a dimwitted cretin with an ex-wife who laughs at him, a teenaged son (Justin Chatwin) who hates his guts and a nine-year-old daughter (Dakota Fanning) who by turns condescends to him, hyperventilates and emits a horrifying banshee wail. Ray gets the kids for the weekend, and in a deft ten minutes or so we learn everything we need to know about the family dynamic. And then all hell breaks loose.
What transpires after the skies outside Ray's house bruise ominously, and the lightning starts to strike- over and over, in the exact same spot in the town square- is Spielberg's best attempt to scare the living shit out of you. With his veteran production team and the desk jockeys at Industrial Light and Magic at his command, he puts the screws to you, ratcheting the tension, twisting the suspense like a knife in your belly, working you over like a palooka on the undercard.
Buildings and homes are obliterated. Earthquakes rip open the earth. Firestorms rage. The aliens mercilessly vaporize the innocent and the guilty, the sinners and the saints alike. The tripods are machines out of your worst nightmares. When the first tripod rises, towering and utterly, forbiddingly alien, over Ray's New Jersey town, and it bellows its hellishly mechanical war cry and then proceeds to fry everything within a mile radius, you'll crap your pants- I'm not kidding. And there's no wink-wink or nudge-nudge to let you know that it's all in good fun; this ain't INDEPENDENCE DAY, folks, and George Bush isn't going to hop into an F-16 and blast the aliens back into space. For his part, Ray spends the rest of the movie running for his life. He doesn't stop running until the credits roll.
It's all so brilliantly executed by Spielberg's team that the picture looks tossed off and effortless. It's far from perfect, mind you. The plot is a leaky boat on the ocean of contrivance. The characters are alternately annoying, very annoying and annoying as all fucking hell. And the ending? Well, I can't really talk about the ending, because it makes me want to kick puppies and push old ladies into the street. Frankly, the ending is unforgivable. But it's what we've come to expect from Spielberg, who has pretty much ruined every one of his films with his shameless pandering- the man thinks we're all suckers, and we just have to live with it.
But the rest of the movie is so spectacular that E.T. and Jar-Jar Binks could have joined Cruise in a Scientology campfire singalong at the end and I still would have walked out of the theater like I'd just been worked over with a lead pipe. Cruise is game, his energy never flags, and not once did he jump onto a couch, proclaim his love for Katie Holmes or berate Brooke Shields. Dakota Fanning, meanwhile, deserves mention at Oscar time. She's utterly believable, and she has the best scared-face in the business. She and Cruise sell the story even more so than the CGI carnage; since JAWS, Spielberg has known that a well-timed reaction shot trumps the most expensive special effects.
What's surprising his how deadly serious is Speilberg's purpose. H.G. Wells wrote "The War of the Worlds" in 1898, during the height of the British Empire, and his message was both simple and prophetic: empires fall. To hone the point, Spielberg infuses the picture with haunting echoes of 9-11. Cruise, covered in human ashes like a Ground Zero survivor. A wall papered with hundreds of homemade missing-person posters. Corpses clogging a river.
Some critics are crying about these images, claiming that they have no place in a summer action flick. Here's an idea: shut the fuck up. If you film the destruction of the Eastern Seaboard in this day and age, then you damn well better acknowledge that the stakes have been raised. War of the Worlds is a horror film, and Spielberg deepens the existential dread by reminding us that the real world is filled with horror on this scale. The alien invasion isn't a metaphorical warning about the hubris of the American empire; it's a reminder that the empire is already crumbling around our ears.
In fact, despite the sellout ending, WAR OF THE WORLDS is a deeply fatalistic film- more so even than SCHINDLER'S LIST, which was after all about hope in a time of darkness. For much of this film, there is no hope. And when victory comes, it comes not through the triumph of the human spirit, but rather through sheer dumb luck.
Far from being a downer, however, it's really a kick-ass thrill ride- the kind that only Spielberg, God bless him, can deliver. If you have an interest, then by all means see it on the big screen. And don't be surprised if you end up seeing it twice.
***
Read more from Mr. Fabulous at http://www.filmreviewblog.com.
More on 'War of the Worlds'...
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
