July 21, 2005

FILM
Director Steven Spielberg opts to take a very low-key approach to adapting H.G. Wells’ venerable science fiction novel The War of the Worlds. The choice must have seemed the only logical one considering that a slam-bang, pump-fisting, action-packed, razzle-dazzle effects approach had already been done with pretty much the same material (right down to a little virus ultimately taking down the alien nasties) in 1996’s Independence Day.

So, sure, there are scenes of the alien tripods wiping out earthlings with their death rays and some other neatly done special effects and some decent action scenes but, generally, Spielberg goes for less-is-more. This is not the joyous, childlike-Spielberg of E.T. and Indiana Jones but the more serious, somber Spielberg of A.I. and Schindler’s List.

Here Spielberg gives us the war through the eyes of one family –– a working-class father (Tom Cruise) and his two estranged children, a 10 years old girl (Dakota Fanning) and a 15 years old rebellious teen (Justin Chatwin). He concentrates more on creating tension and a sense of foreboding rather than non-stop action. He shows us how the frightening circumstance that our protagonists find themselves in propel them to reconnect with each other and, more specifically, for the father to rediscover his own purpose in life. That’s fine as that goes and Spielberg is a master at creating a mood (though he’s done it better elsewhere) but his problem is that even the low-key approach to this material has been taken before and by a Spielberg-protégé, no less. In 2002’s Signs, M. Night Shayamalan adopted exactly this style for his tale of a war between humans and aliens, right down to concentrating on a single family headed by a patriarch (Mel Gibson) whose soul has been lost. Worse –– for Spielberg –– is the fact that Shayamalan did it better. Cruise does play the everyman harried father quite well –– but a little too well, actually.

He submerges “Tom Cruise, movie superstar” beneath his character –– but in movies like this we want to see “Tom Cruise”, larger-than-life, taking no prisoners and busting alien bones. But it’s not that kind of movie and hence Spielberg would have been better off casting a good character actor –– William H. Macy would have been wonderful in the role –– rather than a superstar.

To be sure, The War Of The Worlds is not a bad movie and it’s certainly worth checking it out on the big screen. There was nothing that I actively disliked about it (except for the constant irritating screaming from Dakota Fanning). But, ultimately, I expected to like it a lot more than I did. The movie also stars Tim Robbins in a small but important role and Morgan Freeman lends his voice as the narrator. — Khusro Mumtaz