Review: War of the Worlds
These are the movies where not reading any books at all comes in handy (I highly recommend it to y’all). First of all, it helps with many surprise effects, and in this case, the script is somewhat thin and one-tracked.
But leave it to Steven Spielberg to make the most out of it, and turn it into a fast paced, gritty drama/actioner, with awe inspiring special effects to support it. Both from a storytelling and from a technical standpoint, he’s your man. Again, this movie involves and requires shots that make the heads of the people at ILM spin in overdrive. They even do it in the most short-tracked time period a high SFX demanding movie has ever seen (some 7 months), and it still looks amazing.
The story plays out very much the same way as Independence Day, but with more tense setups and a more focused and hence more intimate setting (only 3 principal characters, Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning and Justin Chatwin). The acting is good, though it’s hard to create a strong emotional bond with all the running and hiding going on.
All in all, even though the train ride is rough and wobbly, I’d say, hop on anyway.8.