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| Released: |
2005 |
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| Genre: |
ADVENTURE
ACTION
DISASTER
MONSTER
REMAKE
SCIENCE FICTION
EPIC
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| Origin: |
US |
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| Colour: |
C |
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| Length: |
116 |
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MIXED Reviews
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| | | For the first 100 minutes of his 117-minute film Spielberg holds the audience in a grip of fear. When Ray and Rachel take refuge in the storm cellar of a survivalist (a miscast Tim Robbins), the director's grip relaxes only a bit, but the film never recovers from this excursion into the Gothic. | | | | | (Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer) | | | Has masterfully polished mechanics, some of the most seamless CGI effects in recent memory, and the Wells veneration is admirable. However, the film takes far too many creative shortcuts, like bookended narration and aliens that make strategically humanlike mistakes, completely incongruous to their technological superiority. | | | | | (Aaron Hillis, Premiere) | | | Not vintage Spielberg, and it's on the grim side for a summer action blockbuster, but it's worth the time and money invested. | | | | | (James Berardinelli, Reelviews) | | | War of the Worlds is all about the FX. I recommend this one purely for the spectacle. The plot's thin, the characters are underdeveloped (but some damn fine acting makes you believe in them, anyway), and the thrills are overly familiar. Every July 4th millions of people turn out to watch the fireworks. Will they be any different than the year before? Probably not. Do people still enjoy them? Absolutely. Why? They look cool. War of the Worlds looks cool. Too bad the grand finale sucks. | | | | | (Alex Sandell, Juicy Cerebellum) | | | In War of the Worlds, Tom Cruise learns to be a better father, and 7 billion people die. There is no question of which is more important to director Steven Spielberg and writers David Koepp and Josh Friedman. Masses of humanity are all very nice in their way, but we can't be expected to feel for them unless the life of a precocious child is in danger... Spielberg and Koepp previously teamed up for Jurassic Park, and in many ways, War of the Worlds is like Jurassic Park IV. Substitute aliens for dinosaurs, make the scope of the dam age exponentially larger, and you pretty much have the same movie. That said, no one does scenes of gut-churning terror like Spielberg. Here he creates perhaps half a dozen scenes of starkly visceral frights. But after awhile, one starts to wish there were something else to it, like a story or characters... Spielberg may be the best at what he does. But it gets old. | | | | | (Daniel Neman, Richmond Times Dispatch) | | | Sports more than a few plot holes (for one, the electricity outage seems might selective), and an ending (faithful to Wells’ original, it should be noted) that feels just a tad too abrupt. But that’s no reason to ignore what is certainly one of the most lovingly crafted, end-of-the-world, cinematic feasts ever made, a spectacle of destruction and survival not even C.B DeMille could have envisioned. | | | | | (Marc Savlov, Austin Chronicle) | | | Spielberg mixes two of his vintage genres, E.T./Close Encounters aliens and Jaws/Jurassic Park suspense, for a thoroughly terrifying action movie. As always, he effortlessly centres on the human drama amid the astounding imagery. So it's a pity the adaptation of HG Wells' classic novel becomes so contrived... It feels like two movies. Cruise is excellent in the first half, because he excels at playing jerks (see Collateral, Magnolia, Rain Man), but becomes grating as a leading man. And this script visibly bends to force him into hero mode. Fanning, meanwhile, delivers a solid performance that continually catches us off guard. And Chatwin nicely holds his own. Nobody else gets much of a chance (Robbins as a goofy-creepy gun nut; Freeman providing superb bookend voice-overs). Despite the script's appalling lapses, Spielberg masterfully crafts a film that's absolutely gripping. We can barely breathe for much of it. And when you're hyperventilating, it's kind of difficult to notice cliches creeping in. | | | | | (Rich Cline, Shadows on the Wall) | | | Combine such angst with eye-popping zip-zang-boom visuals and eardrum-threatening sound-effects (you really need to see this on a BIG screen) and War of the Worlds emerges as a surprisingly satisfying romp which (like Bruce the mechanical shark) keeps moving forward, devouring all in its path. If the film has a fatal flaw, it perhaps lies in a lack of originality which uncharacteristically strips Spielberg of his trendsetter status. | | | | | (Mark Kermode, Observer) | |
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, Dakota Fanning 
