Today I watched the new Blu-Ray of Steven Spielberg's War Of The Worlds. The picture and sound on the Blu-ray are great and there is no doubt that from a technical standpoint the movie is excellent. The special effects are seamless. The editing, cinematography and score all come together to create an exciting sci-fi horror movie. For Spielberg this is a far away from E.T. and Close Encounters as he can get. In reality there is 2/3 of a great movie here. The story of War Of The Worlds is very familiar, so the novel idea to tell it from the point of view of one character works. The movie goes out of its way to avoid the cliches of alien invasion films.
Tom Cruise plays a divorced father who has his kids staying with him the weekend the aliens attack. Cruise is excellent as the father out of his depth as he tries to protect his kids during the ongoing attack. But because of the single person viewpoint the last third of the film becomes anti-climatic. Plus Spielberg's insistence on a happy ending really takes away from everything that came before. Dakota fanning as Cruise's daughter conveys pure terror very well.
At the Movie House rating *** stars
2 comments:
The images of the destruction of the town in New Jersey are jarring and disturbing.
Yes they are. That is why the first half of the film works so well. The first appearance of the tri-pods, the airplane crash and the ferry scene all build towards an penultimate climax that never happens.
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