War of the Worlds - Dayton Daily News movie review

Spielberg directs a terrifying 'War of the Worlds'

By TERRY MORRIS
Dayton Daily News

It may not do for lightning bolts everything that Jaws did for fins protruding from the water near any beach frequented by tourists 30 years ago, but Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds is scary as hell.

There was a lot of breath-holding inside theater No. 1 at Showcase Cinema South during Monday night's jammed preview screening, which emptied out during a light show in the sky that was eerily similar to the way the aliens announce their arrival in the film.

Paramount Pictures

'War of the Worlds'

B+

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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Perfect for a blockbuster that fills this summer's void, this one requires no advance knowledge of H.G. Wells' 1898 novel of the same name, the famed 1938 radio broadcast or the original 1953 film.

Until an unsatisfying and less-than-thoroughly explained turn of events near the conclusion, it more than sturdily stands on its own three striding, menacing, extermination-intending, but not quite invincible, legs.

Even with that, word of mouth about the film should shove the Tom Cruise-Katie Holmes gossip into yesterday faster than the aliens repel our world's pesky troops until something lowly, humble and familiar erodes their patiently planned campaign to liquidate all earthlings and seize their planet for redevelopment.

Cruise is solid as New Jersey dockworker and amateur mechanic Ray Ferrier, who has a spare auto engine on the kitchen counter when his economically advantaged, re-wedded and very pregnant wife (Miranda Otto) drops off the two children they had together for a weekend visit.

Within hours, an asphalt-ripping, brick-shearing, automobile-crunching Armageddon from below and above unleashes towering mobile tripods that can vaporize everything and everyone in sight, harvest and impale humans, deploy snakelike reconnaissance cameras, disgorge infantry troops that have the same vaguely fan-shaped heads as the bellowing battle machines and gradually paint the town red.

Ray is a reluctant and unconcerned dad until sullen son Robbie (Justin Chatwin) calls him on it, and until it really matters. The paternal instinct's rise in him coincides with the lightning-induced hatching that rips the crust of the Earth. Man and machine achieve plot balance in Josh Friedman's screenplay.

Despite Cruise's range, the face — and scream — many of us will mostly remember Dakota Fanning as Ray's 10-year-old daughter Rachel. Two scenes in which her separation from Ray and Robbie becomes likely due to other humans are as terrifying as anything the monsters can dish out.

Even so, this is very much the director's film. Spielberg has earned top billing.

That said, War of the Worlds would be better if he referenced himself as little as he does Wells. There's nothing kind or shy about these space invaders, but we don't want or need obvious and disappointingly predictable comparisons with E.T. to get that. Nor do we need an overlong and stupid-at-any-length tussle over a shotgun between Ray and loony survivalist Ogilvy (Tim Robbins), which unintentionally demonstrates that the enemy isn't so invincible.

Things do begin to fray from that point.

At first in what seems to be the only working motor vehicle on the East Coast, Ray and his kin continually manage to escape and survive. But that's as much a part of sci-fi tradition as accepting that a horde of people will not only volunteer to flee a swift and ray-blasting enemy on a ferryboat, they will kill each other to get on board.

But why nitpick when there's a good, if not perfect, scare to be had in a crowded dark room somewhere nearby right now? Lighting is in the forecast.