Steven Spielberg, you just drove all the way upto the bridge, and instead of crossing it, just plunged into it... That is all I could say about War of the Worlds. After building up a beautiful story line, making everybody sit at the edge of their seats for almost 2 hours, Steve just ended the movie in a rash, uncomprehendable mess of spaghetti, in a way lacking continuity...
Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) is a crane operator, married to Mary (Miranda Otto) and having Kids Robbie(Justin Chatwin) and Rachel(Dakota Fanning). Mary moves over to her parents’ place in Boston, and that night, terror strikes. Thunderstorms make the giant machines buried under earth for ages, (even before the Industrial Revolution, maybe ) come up from underground, and start torching people and homes alike, using energy beams. Ray picks his kids and escapes using a solar powered car(everything else had stopped working), and continue evading the scorchers, who seem to reach everywhere. In the course, he loses Robby, gets stuck up with a madman, who believes he can tunnel and ’rise from under the machines and screw them like they did to us’, and finally lives through the ordeal to reach his wife, (whose locality is, miraculously, still untouched)
Where the movie is a winner is the difference in treatment. In most alien movies, it is all shown in a big perspective. Fighter pilots, presidents, and navy seals who do heroic deeds to save the earth. Here there are no heroes, just a father, aghast at the happenings, and doing whatever in his control to save his kids. He does the same things that you and me would do to save our families in case something like this happens...The horror doesn’t come through gore, but through the expressions in Tommy’s and Dakota’s eyes. The only movie with similar treatment that I can think of is the Signs... Suspense builds up to insane heights in the basement scenes and when Robbie decides to join the soldiers.
Tom cruise is brilliant. The subtle expressions of a worried father, a citizen scared to the point of pissing in his own trousers, and a determined fighter who would stop at nothing to save his kids, all are safe with him. You could watch the movie just for him. The only person who matches him scene by scene is Dakota Fanning, whose freak out scene in the car, the blindfolded scene and when she sees bodies floating in the river- all are just awesome. You feel for the kid, more than for anyone else.
Script is good. Not the best, but good, witty and real-life. Special effects are just fine, not going over the top, and again, its all shown as when viewed from an insignificant human being’s eyes. The scene where the fighters fly overhead to meet the alien machines is one of the best.
Morgan Freeman’s narration is good, but those who missed what he says in the end would go out of the hall thinking that it is the grenade that Ray plants inside one of the machines is the one that has done the trick... So don’t just walk out of the theater when you see the aliens fall. Just sit and listen to the narration till the end!!!