War of the Worlds - Palm Beach Post movie review

'War of the Worlds': Intense, chilling, memorable

By HAP ERSTEIN
Palm Beach Post

In 1938, Orson Welles created national panic with his radio dramatization of the H.G. Wells alien invasion yarn, War of the Worlds.

More than 65 years later, filmmaker Steven Spielberg brings his considerable storytelling skills to the same material, turning it into a tale of one family's survival instincts and determination.

Paramount Pictures

'War of the Worlds'

The verdict: An intense, post 9/11 update of the H.G. Wells yarn, with divorced dad Cruise pitted against the aliens.

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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Welles used only the human voice and the imagination of his audience. Spielberg has considerably more sophisticated tools in his cinematic arsenal. While the special effects in his $130 million summer blockbuster are awesome, he understands the importance of keeping his apocalyptic epic focused more on the earthlings than the space invaders.

Still, it is unlikely in these more audience savvy days that Spielberg can generate a similar frenzied stampede as in Welles' time, except among those running to the box office to see War of the Worlds.

Of course Spielberg has already made two superb films about extraterrestrials — Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. Each was a product of its period, as is this hyper-intense, occasionally gruesome, memorable viewing experience with unmistakable echoes of Sept. 11, 2001. Together they form a thematic trilogy that any director would be proud to have made, but only one conceivably could have.

With the aide of screenwriters David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Spider-Man) and rookie Josh Friedman, Spielberg fleshes out the Wells novel, turning it into the story of a self-centered, divorced dockworker named Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise, in a performance that almost lets us forget his recent talk show antics). Reluctantly, he accepts his two wary children — rebellious teenage Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and emotionally needy Rachel (Dakota Fanning) — for the weekend, when a peculiar lightning storm hits his blue collar New York neighborhood.

Ill-equipped in parenting skills, Ray assures his kids that they have nothing to worry about, even as John Williams' ominous musical score tells us otherwise. If that were not evidence enough, the three-legged mechanical creatures that come up through the streets, cracking through the sidewalks to incinerate everything in their path, are a sure tip-off.

These alien tripods, with their snake-like probes and spindly stalks, are plenty fearsome. Hovering in the corners of the screen, they are far creepier than the creatures themselves, which Spielberg might have been better off never showing.

As the script makes clear, mankind is to be feared at least as much as the extra-terrestrials. Even in the face of an overwhelming enemy, we are apparently incapable of uniting into a common fighting force, preferring to claw at each other. In one of the film's best sequences, all but E.T.-free, Ray and Rachel are offered asylum in the basement of a nutcase named Ogilvy (the aptly cast Tim Robbins), whose efforts to guard against the monsters have fatal repercussions.

As director Spielberg has acknowledged, this War of the Worlds reflects our post-9/11 universe. From the inevitable concern whether terrorists are behind an early power outage, to the frequent ash storms, to an eerie shower of clothing floating down from the clutches of the tripod machines, we are never fully allowed to escape into the realm of science fiction.

Cruise may be spinning out of control off-screen, but this follow-up to his rational assassin in Collateral is further proof of his underrated acting range. Even so, he is topped by the supporting effort of Robbins as a neighborly, but untrustworthy, guy and by the expressive Fanning, surely the best child actor working today. She is the conduit through which we experience the alien onslaught, registering remarkable variations on facial alarm.

Since Welles' Mercury Theatre Halloween special, War of the Worlds has been produced with regularity, as each new generation projects its fears onto the story. Spielberg has captured something very timely with his masterful version, which is likely to chill audiences for years to come.