World War Two

Thanks to his strange behavior, and often irresponsible comments of late, actor Tom Cruise has gone from one of the world's most beloved movie stars, to someone that has offended an awful lot of folks--including members of my own family. And while I'm not here to debate the issues that have been discussed all over the media, as he continues to speak out, I will say that I personally think he should stick to making films--keep your life and beliefs private please.

All of this din that surrounds Cruise did have an effect though...I delayed sitting down to watch Steven Spielberg's remake of War Of The Worlds for quite a long time, as I tried to make sense of what Cruise was doing with his career. Out of my respect (and sheer curiosity) for Spielberg, I finally saw the film, just before it left theaters. The following review concerns the 2 disc limited edition DVD.

The Film: Ray Ferrier (Cruise) is a blue collar dockworker, whose just come off a long shift, is preparing to look after his estranged kids for the weekend. His teenage son Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and daughter Rachel, (Dakota Fanning) are not looking forward to their visit. The trio are spending the weekend together while Ray's pregnant ex-wife Mary Ann (Miranda Otto) and her new boyfriend Tim (David Alan Basche) are off to Boston to visit her parents. Ray's skills as a father are put to the test and then some as he must do everything he can to protect his kids from an alien invasion. Malevolent aliens have landed on Earth to consume our planet and nothing seems to stop them.

From the time that the aliens first attack, it's quite obvious that Spielberg intended the film to be an allegory for the terrorist strikes of September 11th 2001, and in fact the imagery did bring back some of those same feelings of unease I had on that horrible day. Cruise is fine here as an every man in an extraordinary situation. Fanning is once again playing a child wise beyond her years even as she screams her way through the film. I was most impressed with Chatwin though, who more than held his own with the more well known stars of the movie. I thought it was a nice touch having a narrator open and close the film, especially when it happens to be Morgan Freeman, you can't go wrong. Another nice touch was including cameos for the stars of the 1953 version--Gene Barry and Ann Robinson. Spielberg's film is very well made with solid F/X, that serve the story, but they don't over take it. Frequent collaborator, composer John Williams, delivers a strong and unique score for the film. Without giving anything away, my only real problem with the remake is the film's ending, as scripted by Josh Friedman and David Koepp, it loses its punch with a watered down conclusion.

The Extras: Found on disc 2 are a series of featurettes, produced by Spielberg docu-maker Laurent Bouzereau, that cover all aspects of how the film was made. As much as I have enjoyed Bouzereau work in the past, I wish he would start making whole film docs again, the way he did with many of the Hitchcock discs, rather than split everything up the way he does here. I did find the stuff on author H.G. Wells interesting--the interviews with his family and Spielberg's thoughts on his legacy...Additional static screen production notes, a series of photo and trailer galleries, top off the set.

I liked the remake a lot but I still think the original version will hold up better by comparison. You can read my review of the original film, if you click here