War of the Worlds (2005)

"War of the Worlds" is the story of Ray, Rachel and Robbie. Ray, played by Tom Cruise, is a divorced father of two whose kids are staying with him for the weekend. He has a daughter, Rachel (Dakota Fanning), who's about 10, and a son, Robbie (Justin Chatwin), who's about 15 or 16. After Ray and Robbie get into an intense argument in the backyard, Ray goes upstairs to get some sleep before heading off to work at the docks. When he wakes up, Rachel tells him that Robbie took off in Ray's old, beefed-up Mustang. When Ray goes outside, he finds his neighbors looking at a storm brewing in the near distance. Everyone goes to their backyards to watch the storm come in. Then there's lightning, 26 times in a row in the same exact place. After the storm passes, Ray goes back outside to try to find Robbie, who runs up to him when he reaches the corner. Ray sends Robbie back to the house to take care of Rachel while he goes to ground zero, where the 26 strikes of lightning found their ground. A crowd has gathered, and the hole generated by the lightning starts to crack the pavement across the entire town. Eventually, a giant machine rises from underground, based on a huge tripod. The “tripod� starts zapping people, instantly cremating them in a way. Ray eventually makes his way back home, escaping the tripod, and the three of them pack up some food and take off in an old minivan that they stole from the local mechanic. They drive to Rachel and Robbie's mom's house, but no one is there, as she had gone to Boston with her husband. They spend the night in the basement to be safe, and in the morning, Ray goes up to investigate. The basement is the only part of the house left standing; a plane had crashed in the neighborhood. He runs across a TV news crew while checking out the plane, and the reporter shoes him footage of about six or seven of the tripods destructing one city. They also have footage of the lightning, and in slow motion, a creature is visible going down the beam. The tripod machines apparently had been there for millions of years, and the creatures were sent down to operate them.

Fanning disappoints as Rachel, basically providing some hollow screams as opposed to any real, deep emotion that she demonstrated in "I Am Sam." Tim Robbins has the role of the stereotypical crazy man with all the theories, and he doesn't bring anything new to the role, unfortunately. Cruise was not Ray Ferrier; he was Tom Cruise. As in most of Cruise's action movies and in some of the others, Cruise could not escape the well-known persona of Tom Cruise. Cruise is a great actor, and it is possible for him to escape his celebrity, but he didn't do it in "War of the Worlds."

While the acting may leave something to be desired, the special effects were pretty good. They combined the mastery of director Steven Spielberg's previous sci-fi ventures, including "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "Minority Report." However, special effects are not enough to make "War of the Worlds" jump into the same league as the sci-fi greats.

"War of the Worlds" is the second director-actor teaming for Spielberg and Cruise; the first was 2001's futuristic sci-fi crime drama "Minority Report." The Spielberg-Cruise teaming just does not seem to make great movies. "Minority Report" was okay, but "War of the Worlds" grounded itself in cheesy acting and a plot that is far-fetched, too slow to get to the point and too fast once it gets there, leaving watchers bewildered. The movie basically just ended without much explanation, and was very disappointing. The trailer made a point of the saying, Lightning doesn't strike in the same place twice? and I think that the same can be said for the Spielberg-Cruise teaming. It barely struck once.