Overall Rating
  Awesome: 32.72%
Worth A Look: 23.75%
Just Average: 20.05%
Pretty Crappy: 9.76%
Sucks: 13.72%
20 reviews, 259 user ratings
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| War of the Worlds (2005) |
by WilliamPrice
"An impressive mechanical nightmare until the screws start coming loose."
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This action-horror epic is a headlong plunge into a bleak, dark junkyard of destruction –a one-way journey into a pitiless November air littered near and far with sudden explosions and metallic squeals, along a never-ending Armageddon street packed with terrified mobs of zombified non-entities. Towering far into the red-black skies, the monstrous Martian tripods advance, incinerating life and civilization with their infernal heat-ray. From a production design standpoint, Spielberg’s adaptation of H. G. Wells’ science-fiction classic is one rock and rolling, hard-hitting juggernaut that nonetheless stays more or less clear of pointless excess and makes laudable use of the art of suggestion. What it needs, however, is a compelling and believable storyline, and unfortunately it comes up a bit short in that department.The tale is told from the point of view of divorced dad Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise), who finds himself fighting to survive and save his two kids from a the very sudden and unpleasant invasion of New York by, you know, Martians. Virtually everything we see is through his eyes – a noteworthy exercise in cinematic restraint, especially given the recent plague of CGI-inspired, dizzying and pointless crane shots. Besides, this is a difficult and complicated story to relate. Even H. G.’s 1898 original, while told mostly in the first person, resorts to a lengthy description that begins: “If one could have hung that June morning in a balloon in the blazing blue above London…”. Spielberg’s directorial mastery puts us right in the center of the action, daring to confuse and perplex us in the same way as we might actually be under those circumstances. Here and there we gather enough background information so that we don’t feel disassociated from events onscreen. (Well, there is one glaring exception – unexplained red creeper weeds that are seen in the latter half of the film. For the record, Wells describes these weeds as originating from Martian seeds brought to earth either intentionally or accidentally by the Martians. All Martian vegetation is red, and this has nothing to do with human blood.)
The story problems arise not from the ambitious point-of-view style, but from a feeble premise in the human-interest department. Ray’s immature evasion of his fatherly responsibilities comes to a crisis just as the cataclysmic invasion begins. So we would expect the progress and resolution of his personal crisis to parallel the invasion itself. (At least that’s what I would expect –you can expect what you want.) And I sort of do get what I’m expecting, but there’s really not enough meat on the bones of this inner story to make it work, especially in the latter half of the film. That’s when the characters start to lose their purpose and the storyline stalls and resorts to exaggeration and action clichés.
The whole thing starts quite well. We meet Ray as he collects his children -15 year-old Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and 10 year-old Rachel (Dakota Fanning) – to care for them over the weekend for his ex-wife and her new, oppressively perfect husband, Tim. Immediately it is evident that the kids do not like their Dad (especially Robbie) because he is inattentive and neglectful, prone to making glib, phony excuses for his non-involvement, and thinks he’s god’s gift to everyone. Even so, Ray is beginning to see that no one takes him seriously or really trusts him, and his self-image as a beloved father is starting to crumble. He gets pissed while playing catch with Robbie and throws the ball through his own window (reversing usual father-son cliché), takes a nap, and wakes up to find Robbie has stolen his beloved ’67 Mustang. His feelings of frustration and impotence reach a new peak, and at this moment the invasion begins.
This introductory sequence is expertly crafted: fast-paced and engaging, while effortlessly detailing the situation and the viewpoints of all the various characters. We like Ray, despite his defects, while at the same time we sympathize with his kids and the situation he’s putting them in. We are encouraged to see Ray at least beginning to sense his shortcomings, and when the car is stolen we share his helplessness. It’s not going to be easy to put this situation right, perhaps impossible. Ray’s failures over the years, which are now coming back to haunt him, cannot be erased. Similarly, the groundwork for the soon-to-begin Martian invasion was laid “million of years ago”, so it too may be unstoppable at this point. (By the way, this is a significant and largely illogical departure from the original Wells.)
The kids are safe in the house when Ray witnesses the coming of the first Martian tripod, a ruthless killing machine, in a scene of indescribable havoc. Winding the action to a fever pitch this early in the film creates a real storytelling challenge. How to keep up the excitement? When a shell-shocked Ray returns to the house to save his kids, his frantic, disjointed efforts and the children’s baffled responses keep us on the edge of our seat, a testament to the quality of the characters and situations Spielberg has created thus far. They boot it out the neighborhood in a stolen station wagon, just before the nearby overpass and all its traffic blows up and falls on his house. Wowie zowie!
The exploits of the semi-dysfunctional Ferrier family continue to hold our interest throughout the first half of the film, interspersed and intertwined with eye-popping and mind-boggling scenes of carnage and destruction. Eventually Ray realizes that not only are his kids slipping out of his control, but they don’t trust him or have any faith in his ability or commitment to be their protector. He sobs like a baby.
At this point, I would opine, it’s time for Ray to seek redemption, possibly through some act of great heroism and self-sacrifice, to demonstrate that he is ready to turn over a new leaf and put his self-serving ways behind him. Instead we get nothing. There is no further resolution of his personal crisis, with the movie only half over. The internal politics of the Ferrier family loose steam and start becoming forced and less meaningful or interesting. Consequently, the external action becomes alternately clichéd or just plain awkward and weird.
When Tim Robbins shows up dressed like Frodo Baggins, you know the end is near. Ironically, if they had stuck closer to Wells with this character, (who is actually a misguided amalgam of two characters from the book), and the accompanying scenario, the surprise happy ending wouldn’t be so saccharine and sudden. Wells’ original design was to allow a prolonged post-invasion spell of dread and disillusionment that renders the eventual upbeat ending more poetic and dramatically acceptable. Unfortunately neither this flick nor the 1953 version followed his lead.
I should mention that the acting is quite good throughout, although Tom Cruise’s super-easygoing flair betrays him in some of the more intense scenes. Most noteworthy is Dakota Fanning, whose believability in situations of intense horror is quite astonishing. As scripted, she has the best part, and hers is probably the best performance.
The music for War of the Worlds is by John Williams and sad so say it's an anemic disappointment. Consisting largely of hackneyed references to Night on Bald Mountain and The Rites of Spring (and lets not forget the Gayne Ballet Suite ), it is wholly lacking in the visceral intensity of earlier Williams work for Spielberg such as Jaws. It is also totally lost in the mix with the overblown sound effects, and in any case it sounds like it was compressed to a sonic pancake. A missed opportunity.
Spielberg’s command of the action move form is this film’s real strength. He gives us authentic point-of-view story telling, taut editing free from fast, dishonest junk cuts, extreme yet believable-looking visuals, and a dark, dreary color palette that is nonetheless natural looking. Another specialty is the art of suggestion, used in scene after scene. Providing us with only flashing lights at the window, or eerie sound effects, he focuses our attention the character’s reactions, and somehow we think we are seeing more than we really are. Because our imagination is becoming involved, these scenes can be even more powerful than those where the graphic effects are pushed right in our face.Spielberg’s War of the Worlds is primarily a visual treat, with a pretty far-out storyline. Thematically weaker than either Wells’ book or the 1953 version, it is still a worthy science-fiction film, albeit with the accent on action-horror. It features good performances and dynamite effects. True, it gets stoopider towards the end, but there is enough semblance of drama to carry you safely to the end credits. Things could be worse.
link directly to this review at https://www.hollywoodbitchslap.com/review.php?movie=12482&reviewer=407
originally posted: 08/19/05 02:37:48
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USA
29-Jun-2005 (PG-13)
DVD: 22-Nov-2005
UK
N/A
Australia
29-Jun-2005
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