ay Ferrier (Cruise), a divorced New Jersey dockworker, is not much of a father to his two children, 11-year-old Rachel (Fanning) and teenage Robbie (Chatwin). When Ray's ex-wife, the very pregnant Mary Ann (Miranda Otto), drops them off for the weekend, Ray's late, and the kids can barely bring themselves to say hello.
So Ray welcomes the distraction of a peculiar lightning storm over his neighborhood, the Ironbound section of Bayonne. But when the lightning strikes repeatedly, Ray is suddenly not so sure it's benign. He and Rachel flee inside. When the lightning stops, so do all of the electronic devices in town, as well as all of the vehicles and even Ray's wristwatch.
Ray walks to the center of town, where five streets come together and where the lightning strikes were concentrated. Passing a neighbor, Ray tells him that his van can be fixed with new solenoids, which should overcome the electrical damage likely caused by the lightning.
In town, a crowd has gathered to inspect the center of the street, where the asphalt has collapsed. Suddenly, the street cracks, sending fissures up the sidewalk and even into the surrounding buildings. Glass shatters and bricks fall, and the screaming crowd falls back The ground shudders. Then it stops.
Ray and the others look back. The street rumbles to life again; the surrounding buildings collapse. The street heaves up, then falls, creating a giant sinkhole. Then the unthinkable happens.
An immense machine rises out of the ground on three spindly legs, towering more than 100 feet in the air, dwarfing the buildings. Massive headlights on its face scan the crowd as tentacles unfurl. And, without warning, the tentacles shoot beams of energy into the crowd, which has now started running. As the beam sweeps the crowd, people die.
Ray narrowly escapes and runs home. We're leaving now, he tells the children. They pack up a few belongings, then commandeer the van that now runs, the only operable vehicle on the street.
And as Ray drives away, behind him, the machine begins to destroy his entire world.
Cruise embodies the Everyman
Based on the first and most celebrated alien-invasion novel of all time, Spielberg's War of the Worlds updates the story, adds a few new characters and a few new wrinkles and packages it with all of Spielberg's filmmaking prowess and the best technology of the 21st century. Yet Spielberg and Cruise manage to capture the spirit of Wells' 19th-century book like no other incarnation before it. This War of the Worlds is everything Wells' was: gritty, intimate, epic, heartbreaking, thought-provoking and, most of all, out-of-this-world terrifying.
Much of the credit goes to the script, credited to Friedman and Koepp, with assists from Cruise and Spielberg. Wells' central, unnamed character has been morphed into Cruise's Ferrier, a flawed slacker dad, and adds a couple of children to the equation. This allows a modern audience to relate to the horrifying events in a very direct way, as Wells' narrator doubtless spoke for his audience. And say what you will about Cruise's personal life, his performance imbues everyman Ferrier with such authentic feeling that the audience can't help but be drawn in. Fanning, similarly, proves she's one of the best actresses of her generation (or any) by making her Rachel a real kid: smart but scared, wise but insecure. Robbins offers a brief but scary performance that brings Ray's dilemma into sharp focus.
The reality of the characters and their milieu only intensifies the horror of the war once it begins, upending ordinary lives in a heartbeat, as it might in reality.
And what a war it is. Spielberg has gone back to Wells as his inspiration for the alien war machines, which appear as Tripods for the first time in memory. As in Wells, they are a hundred feet high, tentacled and implacable, and Spielberg has added unearthly noises to heighten their fearsomeness.
Beyond this, Spielberg again demonstrates that he's one of the most gifted filmmakers ever. Unlike similar scenes in the far inferior Independence Day, the attacks in War come suddenly, the characters catch up with the action in the middle of things, and the violence is random and definitely not pretty to look at: truly a fog of War. The camera is often moving or hand-held; action is glimpsed from behind objects, from a low point of view or out of kilter; and sometimes the action occurs out of frame or in the background. The experience, as in Wells book, is from the point of view of a frightened refugee with no real knowledge of events around him, trying only to get away, and the result is extremely disconcerting.
The movie isn't perfect: A sequence late in the movie, invented by Spielberg and involving a grenade belt, feels oddly out of place and over the top. And the ending may strike some viewers as too abrupt and overly sentimental, though Wells' book ends similarly.
