War of the Worlds Review
by [email protected] (dnb AT dca DOT net)July 14th, 2005
WAR OF THE WORLDS
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2005 David N. Butterworth
*** (out of ****)
"No one would have believed in the early years of the twenty-first century that our world was being watched by intelligences greater than our own. That as men busied themselves about their various concerns... confident of their empire over this world... intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded our planet with envious eyes... and slowly, and surely, drew their plans against us."
Few would be surprised to learn, however, that Hollywood wunderkind Steven Spielberg ("E.T.," "Saving Private Ryan," the Indiana Jones and "Jurassic Park" franchises), together with his main man Tom Cruise ("Collateral," "The Last Samurai," and Spielberg's own "Minority Report"), have been prepping a big-budget spectacular based on H.G. Wells's apocalyptic 1898 science fiction novel "The War of the Worlds" for a Summer 2005 release.
While Spielberg's "War of the Worlds" is missing much of the quasi- political doctrine of the original text, with its indirect indictments of British colonialism (the film's setting has thusly been transplanted from Victorian England to modern day New York), it's still a rip- roaring yarn that imagines the earth under attack by little gray-green creatures in their towering, tripod-like fighting machines.
Cruise plays divorced dockworker Ray Ferrier who's got custody of his two kids for the weekend while his ex-wife (Miranda Otto) heads up to Boston with her beau Tim (David Alan Basche). The kids are alright, played by a spunky Dakota Fanning ("Hide and Seek," "Man on Fire") and "The Chumscrubber"s Justin Chatwin. Teenage Robbie (Chatwin) doesn't want much to do with Ray but Rachel is a little more sympathetic towards her father figure. Spielberg paints these early scenes typically well, establishing creaky familial relations with panache and a brooding sense of authenticity. Cruise is good here but little Fanning rarely allows him to upstage her.
When storm clouds gather and begin circling, maelstrom-like, and electrical discharges, contrary to popular belief, suddenly start striking the same spot once, twice, twenty-eight times, Ray and his two unsettled charges soon find themselves slap bang in the epicenter of some spectacular alien invasion made staggeringly plausible by the special effects wizards at Industrial Light & Magic--blacktop buckles, steepled buildings topple, and huge, tentacled, subterranean creatures emerge from the fissures erupting from the city streets, blasting the hapless citizens with their deadly heat rays and rendering them as lifeless as disembodied garments blowing in on the wind (an inventive image that stays with you).
The film propels on apace, slowing for some talky interludes in a farmhouse basement with the Oscar(r) winner Tim Robbins as a crackpot name Ogilvy, but mostly maintaining its momentum with high-octane performances and highly accomplished technical credits. In a lot of ways the conclusion, which anyone who has read the book, seen the 1953 George Pal production, or owns Jeff Wayne's musical double concept album from 1978 knows, is anti-climactic, and seems to happen way too soon as far as Spielberg's film is concerned (I, for
one, was just getting comfortable with the ensuing mayhem).
Still, at just shy of two hours, "War of the Worlds" provides plenty of visual pyrotechnics for purists to admire, plus some acting fireworks courtesy Fanning and Cruise, with Spielberg once again back in the driver's seat after last year's disappointing lovesick layover ("The Terminal").
All summer blockbusters should be as loud and scary--and deliver--like this.
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David N. Butterworth
[email protected]
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