War of The Worlds. Review.

What can I say . . . I was so looking forward to this movie.

I feel horrible saying this but it was kind of cheap. There are just too many aspects of 9/11 being portray here. From the dust filled panic ridden carnage on the streets to the airliner crash, its seems as if Spielberg was working to a checklist of sorts. The first 45 minutes are very impressive gripping even, but from there on I felt very detached from the characters and I had to force myself to become involved in the story again. Having had a couple of days to think about it, I think I may have figured out why . . .

Spielberg's War of The Worlds cannot be comsummed in isolation, millions of people have read the book and listen to the LP/CD. If there was no book or Jeff Wayne interpretation I'd be declaring the film's success along with the rest of them, but you simply cannot ignore that this film has a heritage.

Both the book and Jeff's LP have a sense of engagement that the film only achieves during one 25 minutes sequence. The 'birth' of the first Tripod and ensuing panic is successfully portrayed, with Cruise putting in a real winner of a performance. The rest of the film failed to connect with me in a way that the book and LP did in the 1980's. Am I the only one that felt the whole basement martian sequence to be dull? In the book the Martians take their time, they spend the whole night getting their fighting machines battle ready, during that part of the book there is a real sense of dread. People carry on with their daily lives even as the Martians build in number and fighting strength. There is nothing to compare to this in the film, the Martians arrive and 20 minutes later they pretty much 'own' the earth! In the book the artillery man's experiences help to convey the might of the Martian fighting machines, in the film this is attempted by the reporter at the 747 crash site, it simply does not work. In Well's story the Thunderchild sequence marks the finally transition of power, there is nothing in the film that really compares to this, and the film is smaller because of it.

Truth is when H.G. Wells created War of The Worlds, a fighting machine that could tower over Big Ben was impressive indeed but in 2005 this just doesn't work too well. Imagine a Tripod marching through the financial district of Manhattan Island, it would be dwarfed by the huge buildings that dominate the skyline. This story belongs to the time in which it was written.

Any film is more than just the story and the acting, the look and the sound are equally important. The film achieves a very high level of realism, perhaps surpassing anything that has come before it. The sound effects are also astonishing, you feel this film in the centre of your chest! As for the music, well John Williams just didn't deliver this time, sadly.

**UPDATE** After reading a few reviews, something that I didn't do before I saw the movie, it would seem that there is a growing chasm between what the average man on the street thinks and what the paid reviewers think. People think it's average, reviewers say it's the best thing ever!