War of the Worlds - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution movie review

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'War of the Worlds': A thrilla like 'Godzilla'

By BOB LONGINO
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"War of the Worlds" is as weird as Tom Cruise.

It couch-dives, preens and gushes about love and goop. It just doesn't co-star Katie Holmes.

Paramount Pictures

'War of the Worlds'

The verdict: Great first half before it goes all "A.I." on us.

Director: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Tom Cruise, Justin Chatwin, Dakota Fanning, Tim Robbins, Miranda Otto, David Alan Basche
Run time: 117 minutes
Release date: June 29, 2005
Rating: PG-13 for frightening sequences of sci-fi violence and disturbing images.
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Finally, all those nattering talk shows can be tossed aside so that the public discourse about the movie itself can begin.

"War," Steven Spielberg's remake of the classic H.G. Wells' alien invasion story with a family twist, is one-half of a terrific movie. When it's in full throttle — when otherwordly invaders rear their ugly, plodding, head-banging machines and begin to annihilate Earth's humanity with vaporizing rays — there's not been and probably won't be a better action movie out there this summer.

But "War" also peters out. It means Spielberg, who's spent more than an hour grabbing moviegoers by their throats, decides to let things slide. He goes soft, safe and huggable. This is, after all, the man who inserted walkie-talkies where guns should be in his 20th anniversary edition of "E.T."

Cruise is his usual manic self. He plays New Yorker Ray Ferrier, a stud dock worker who speeds around in a stud Mustang and, for fun with his son, throws fast pitches in a game of catch while wearing his Yankees baseball cap.

Divorced, he keeps a rebuilt engine in his kitchen. And on one particular weekend, he has to play dad — something he's not really good at — with his teen son Robbie (the nearly unknown Justin Chatwin) and tweener daughter Rachel (the virtually everywhere Dakota Fanning and this film's best actor).

As narrator Morgan Freeman intones in his bankable baritone, creatures from a galaxy far, far away long ago looked at Earth with "envious eyes" and "slowly but surely drew their plans against us."

Like in Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," that means dark, cloudy skies roll in. Lots of lightning. Ground that shakes. And home electricity and batteries that go kaput.

When the alien attack begins, "War" becomes one of the best "Godzilla" movies you'll ever see with panicked crowds, marauding extra-terrestrial machines and metalic-sounding, pulsating music worthy of a great Japanese megamonster movie.

This scene is especially good in the way Spielberg captures the humans' mixture of awe and fear.

As long as Cruise and the kids stay on the run, "Worlds" works.

There is an amazing sequence as Cruise commands a speeding car. The camera focuses in tight for an intense exchange among the characters, then backs out and around the moving car before returning in close to capture more dialogue.

There are numerous crowd shots that look like welcome old-school filmmaking with hundreds of extras and minimal computer-generated imagery.

It's when "Worlds" goes small that the film's excitement fades.

There are the arguments between kids and absent father (the "You never cared for us!" stuff), an overlong stint in the basement of a farmhouse with a mentally disturbed Tim Robbins and standard-issue horror film moments involving invaders snooping around, looking for fresh meat.

Worse, Spielberg lets his movie limp home. He's built his film around what kind of father and man Cruise's Ray will become. Does he save his race? Save his daughter and son? Keep moving away? Stand and fight?

Spielberg plays it safe all the way around. He begs the questions. Then, just like in "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence," backs off. What happens in that farmhouse, for instance, is a matter of interpretation.

It makes a potentially interesting movie less interesting — even when it packs thrilla moments.