War of the Worlds

War of the Worlds is an alien invasion story through the eyes of Ray (Tom Cruise) and his family. I was sort of glad with that, if not, it would be like your typical alien invasion story, or an Independence Day clone. So, no military tactics, top secret high tech fighter jets, pentagon whatsoever. It was pretty scary though.

I think the first hour of the movie was brilliant. There were some loopholes. I wasnt sure why the van they stole was working... something about changing the solenoid. Or how obvious it was that a path was made for tom cruise to drive past stranded cars on the highway to Boston. Otherwise, the first hour was so cool that I told myself to forget about these minor loopholes.

The second half of the movie was not so great, but still good in my opinion. The scene with tim robbins.... the scene when ray decided to kill tim robbins was so weird. I dont like this mad man character at all.... it sort of took my mind off the story, and WOTW suddenly was a psycho drama, when it should stick to science fiction slash horror, in my opinion.

However, the most dissapointing thing was the ending. Everything that built up to the ending was good if not brilliant. Then, for some reason the shield that was protecting the alien tripods suddenly failed, and apparently men was able to defeat aliens. The narration at the end mentioned something about the aliens dying of chemical imbalance or virus/microorganism related thing.... not sure what it was, but that was weak.

Mr Steven Spielberg seems to be more relaxed these days..... his recent movies, like this, The Terminal, AI and Minority Report, are somewhat good.... but not really there, "serabai". Loopholes and cheesy/corny stuff all over the place. How great WOTW would turn out to be..... if spielberg made it with the intensity and accuracy of Saving Private Ryan or schindlers list. Or in other words, put more thoughts into it.

However, I think WOTW is very entertaining, sleekly produced with superb special effects and production, and I give it 4 stars out of 5.