Caffeinated Clint
He may be acting nuttier than a Snickers Bar these days (keep bouncing on those couches and they’re only going to lose their recoil dude) but like the all-time favourite choccie bar, Tom Cruise still goes down OK – especially when he’s 50-feet-tall. Coupled with the always inviting Steven Spielberg, and the offer is even more attractive. Suddenly that Snickers becomes a punnet of choccie supreme, say Ferrero Roches. The Best.
Spielberg and Cruise’s second collaboration together (after the fantastic sci-fi thriller “Minority Report” in 2002) is an updated take on the ol’ HG Wells classic that has the little lime men – a race Spielberg’s quite familiar with by now – riding their oversized machines to earth in an effort to wipe out one-and-all.
Insolvent blue-collar worker Ray (Tom Cruise) has got his kids for the weekend. But before they’ve even been asked the obligatory ‘So how’s your Mum been doing?’ (Mum’s played by Miranda Otto in a wasted blink-and-you’ll-miss-her role) question – lightning strikes, the ground rips up, and the neighbouring area is overrun with three legged machines that zap anyone in their path.
Along with his son Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and daughter Rachel (Dakota Fanning), Ray drives – in the only working car in the area mind you, thanks to a nippy amendment – out of the Big Apple and towards the country where, yep, the killer E.T’s ultimately end up anyway.
Steven Spielberg is a great storyteller and a prince of special and visual effects – unfortunately he can’t seem to mesh both elements successfully at the same time. Like “Jurassic Park”, his redo of “War of the Worlds” is more spectacle than script. So much time has been put into staging the over-the-top, but eye-popping action sequences that the yarn itself has seemingly been neglected. Sure there’s a little bit of backstory in there about the characters, but not enough to sustain a tear when one of them breaks from the herd and heads into the fire. That emotional wham Spielberg served up so well in, say, “E.T” (1982) and “Jaws” (1975) is unfortunately missing.
On the other hand, if it is to see the tricks Sir Capshaw has created on his I-mac, that you’ve come for – then you won’t be disappointed, well, not until the last half. The first hour or so is an absolute marvel. The machines are sensationally looking, near bona fide, and their destruction is eye-popping. But at the same time, both “Independence Day” and “The Day After Tomorrow” offered a lot more when it came to the razzle-dazzle (and even “Signs” treaded familiar territory). Here, there’s a short period spent on the alienation of our race and the devastation of the footpath but then, as if the effects budget has run out, more and more time passes between each bit of computer-spawned eye candy.
Overall, “War of the Worlds” is quite a movie – except until it’s third, final act (from here on known as the ‘Tim Robbins’ part). It takes a real dive about an hour and a smidge in – building us up with a brilliant introduction and some marvellously daunting enemies – and resorts to impassive chatter, and a need to seemingly race for the finishing line – ostensibly unsure of how to finish the thing. In turn, there’s a ridiculously mediocre conclusion tacked on.
“War of the Worlds” is good value for your buck, but it’s neither Cruise nor Spielberg’s best film. Like lamb cutlets served at a fancy restaurant, the meat on it is tasty – it’s just that there isn’t much of it.
Never fully imagined.
