|
War of the Worlds
Steven Spielberg is the man who created the summer blockbuster with Jaws way back in the day. He followed with other classics like ET, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and the Indiana Jones films. He really had something with those films that blockbusters don't have today. He had character. For every great action or effects sequence there was an equally great character sequence, or in the case of Jaws there was much more character than effects. For example in ET Spielberg built a well defined family unit, albeit a bit dysfunctional (just made it more real to me), that we cared about. So, when the action kicks in we worry for them. ET himself was more than a special effect, he had character, and we cared for him too. Movies like Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow have very stereotypical characters with only the depth needed to get us to the next action sequence. Now Spielberg finally makes his mostly triumphant return to the summer blockbusters with War of the Worlds.
Ray (Tom Cruise) is a dock worker in New Jersey. After a long shift he meets his ex-wife and her new undefined love interest to pick up his two kids for the weekend. He is typically late and the kids, especially the teenage son, don't seem to happy to be there. Ray has fallen deep into adult adolescence, as is common with bachelors. He has a run down and messy house but a hot rod car and a flat screen TV. He loves his kids, but he also seems a little annoyed at the inconvenience of having them for the weekend. Ray isn't a bad guy, but he's far from a good guy. He's a kid in a man's body. Maybe that's why Tom Cruise is jumping on couches lately. Maybe he took this character to heart.
Within the first 15 to 20 minutes Spielberg does what he does best here. He quickly and realistically develops the relationships between these characters. Within that short time we know everything I've already mentioned plus Ray's ex-wife's new love interest is working hard to buy the love of the children, the ex-wife's parents hate Ray, and the kids and Ray's ex-wife are on a health food kick. Everything plays very real and disconnected within this family.
During these character development scenes playing ominously in the background are news reports on TV about odd storms at various locations around the world causing electromagnetic pulses that essentially stops any machine using electricity. Finally one such storm appears above New York City. Ray, in a perfect demonstration of his adolescence, runs out to have a look and has to be begged to come inside by his frightened daughter (Dakota Fanning).
Literally from this moment on through the first hour of the film the tension constantly builds and the big sci-fi movie stays grounded in horror and suspense elements. These aliens are scary and brutal. Upon their first appearance they immediately begin murdering anyone within sight and destroying anything within their path. Rather than disconnect from the audience by zooming out and destroying national monuments the film stays with our characters as they witness the destruction of their own city block and the mass murder of nearly everyone they know. I wasn't sitting their in awe of the effects, I was afraid of them, and that in and of it's self is a unique to summer movies these days. Rather than to simply dazzle the audience the effects are used to invoke an emotional response, and it works beautifully.
Perhaps my favorite thing about this movie is how it stays with this family rather than moving in typical fashion to the scientists who are working on a way to stop the attacks. In fact War of the Worlds doesn't even follow the military as they move into attack the alien ships. It always stays with our real identifiable characters. We see the military mobilizing and we see some brief attacks, but mostly we are pushed along by them, feeling like we are actually part of the mass groups of refugees trying to find safety. Ray's not an unendingly brilliant guy working with the government to stop the aliens he's just trying to get his kids to safety like everyone else in the film, like most people we know would in real life. This movie is so grounded and realistic that every death has meaning, and every death is horrifying and brutal, unlike ID4 where so many nameless faces died that I never felt invested in it at all.
The first hour maintains an amazing level of intensity and suspense while moving along at a super fast clip. All of a sudden after about an hour the wind gets sucked from the sails for what seems like an excruciatingly long time. Ray and his daughter find themselves in the basement of a local man determined to wait until the perfect time to strike at the aliens played by Tim Robbins. It feels like Spielberg couldn't decide if this guy was supposed to be a complete freak for real or just for comedy relief. I got the feeling of claustrophobia Spielberg was going for by cramming these three into such a small space with Ray not knowing what this crazy guy was going to do next, I just didn't buy it. Maybe if Spielberg would have taken Robbins's character completely over the edge it might have played better for me. I noticed myself checking my watch during these scenes. The minute Ray and his daughter left that basement, the movie was back in full swing again, and working again.
All the while they are traveling and all this epic stuff is going on Ray's story arc as a father remains the centerpiece of the film. The end of his story arc where he becomes the caring father is obvious, the is a Steven Spielberg movie after all, but the arc runs nearly the entire length of the movie and it's a gritty and realistic journey. At one point in Ray's story arc his son accuses him of just choosing to get to Boston so he can drop the kids off with their mother and he won't have to worry about them anymore. This scene is a powerful moment in Ray's story arc as he has to look inside himself and admit that this might be true. The film is full of great character moments like this. There's another scene where Ray is trying to feed the kids as he deals with the devastation he's just seen that reminded me a lot of the dinner scene from Signs. After seeing this you'll know why so many people say that M. Night Shyamalan is an up-and-coming Steven Spielberg. The sensibilities of these two scenes couldn't be more similar.
In a lot of ways War of the Worlds is a culmination of Steven Spielberg's career. In this film you can see the influence of all his years of work. There's shades of Jaws where we know that something terrible is happening but instead of seeing it we feel it in the faces of the characters. The alien attacks are a great combination of what he learned on Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Jurassic Park, and here they may even surpass those movies at some points. We also get one of the most schmaltzy sugary endings I've seen in a movie in years. I understand that this is a summer movie so we should come out exhilarated and not so down trodden, but there is a happy medium that he could have went to rather than what we got. I really hated the ending.
With all the terrible publicity Tom Cruise has been bringing on himself lately I had almost forgotten that he's a good actor. In his early days he rode the charisma train but I think being married to Nicole Kidman for a while forced him to up his game. I would never have thought that he could pull off playing a blue collar type but I believed it all the way. Dakota Fanning is simply amazing. She can say so much with a simple facial expression. She's a better actor than many big names three times her age. She could easily be the second coming of Jodie Foster.
ILM's special effects were handled quite well for the most part. I think that had a lot to do with Spielberg's direction though. He kept the film's focus on the characters with the special effects being something happening in the background. There are a few instances, including a burning train that look a little too cgi-ish. This film has a style somewhere between Minority Report and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Many scenes are a bit blown out and soft around the edges. It felt like this was done to cover the mix of background special effects and real world actors and set pieces. This might not be the case, it may have simply been a stylistic choice. The problem is that this technique ahs been used for that reason so much that it automatically seems like that's what the filmmakers are doing in every case. There's also an instance where after the EMP has went off and every electric device is fried a guy's video camera is still working fine. This bugged me a bit because the whole popcorn science behind the EMP is sacrificed in order to get one creative shot. But, at the same time, I'll admit that it was a damn cool shot and one of my favorites in the movie. I'm getting into some nitpicking here because overall this film is beautifully shot and the set designs are as is always the case with a Spielberg film, gorgeous.
This may be one of Spielberg's most vicious films to date, and that's a good thing. He definitely ties it all up in the end in a nice bow but on the way he creates to some really gritty tension and some seriously brutal attacks on humanity including a notable drowning. Even with my complaints I have to say that War of the Worlds is one of the smartest summer blockbuster type films I've seen in many, many years. This movie proves that beyond the shadow of a doubt, Steven Spielberg's still got it! Had we had a better ending and the Tim Robbins segment cut in half this film might have gotten a perfect score. But instead it gets a respectable...
8/10
-Stephen Lackey |
 |
|
War of the Worlds
Directed by Stephen Spielberg
Starring Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning
Review: 8/10
Related Reviews |
