Spielberg's Still Got It...Sort of...

Steven Spielberg must have some kind of abandonment issues. A brief review of his resume shows a number of kids in peril due to the absence or negligence of their parents. In "Empire of the Sun," Christian Bale's Jim gets separated from his parents due to the turmoil in Shanghai during World War II. In "Hook," a grown-up Peter Pan's kids get whisked away by Captain Hook to Never-Never Land and one of them gets brainwashed, thanks to the fact that Peter Pan is an absentee father. In "Minority Report," the cop played by Tom Cruise is tormented by the fact that his only son was kidnapped from right under his nose at a public pool, of all places.

The trend continues with "War of the Worlds" which has Tom Cruise's self-absorbed divorcee Ray Ferrier transformed into the father he should be by the near-extinction of the human race at the hands of a bunch of alien invaders. People who think that this movie represents uncovered ground for Spielberg clearly haven't looked back at his filmography, but admittedly, it still has its good points. And it still reaffirms my faith in him somehow. Those wary of some minor spoilers, feel free to avoid the review that follows...

For example, and in my opinion most of all, this movie demonstrates that in this day and age of maverick directors and a new generation of Spielbergs (like Peter Jackson, Sam Raimi, the Wachowski Brothers and Christopher Nolan, to name a few) Steven still has a number of tricks up his sleeve that still set him apart as a master filmmaker. The best example of this is a freeway sequence where the camera seems to actually follow the speeding van driven by Ray for a full five minutes, zooming in on their conversations and pulling back to show the speeding vehicle. To my mind it's possible ILM trickery was involved in this sequence, but knowing how Spielberg always seems to be on the cutting edge of everything, I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't. This is exactly the kind of innovation that has made him who he still is, recent critical and box-office misfires notwithstanding.

And of course, evident from the film is that nearly a quarter-century after Raiders of the Lost Ark, Spielberg has yet to lose his sense of scope. In this day and age where just about everything is digital, it would have been easy to write off the gigantic death machines piloted by the alien invaders as nothing but more CGI plastered onto the screen. In Spielberg's hands, however, they aren't. They FEEL larger than life. They look and even sound terrifying, and are, in my opinion, more than the sum of their pixels. Seeing these things on the screen made me wish I could have seen this movie in IMAX. Their design, actually a faithful nod to H.G. Wells' conceptualization of the machines, is actually a little goofy and, according to the laws of physics, somewhat awkward, but watching them in action still managed to dazzle me.

Finally, Spielberg STILL has that eye for images that linger. Remember the pink-clad little girl in Schindler's List? Or the brutal death scenes of a number of the soldiers in Saving Private Ryan? There are a number of similarly gut-wrenching scenes in War of the Worlds, one involving dozens of dead bodies floating in a river and another involving a burning train hurtling by hundreds of dazed refugees. Yes, although this was certainly intended as a summer popcorn movie, Spielberg has infused it with plenty of the harrowing sensibility he cultivated making those two World War II movies. I'm still not decided on whether or not this was done in good taste, but the images by themselves were undeniably powerful.

Anyway, lest this sound like some love letter to Spielberg (though I suppose it's too late for that) the film was not without its flaws. For one thing, the plotline that held all these brilliant set pieces together was not just thin, it was practically threadbare, and pockmarked with cliches, not only in the form of the negligent parent, but plot devices and sequences recycled from some of Spielberg's old movies. There is a scene there that is definitely reminiscent of the one in Jurassic Park where the two kids hide out from hungry raptors. And Tom Cruise, while a competent actor, is definitely not a great one, and I think he's already past that point in his career where it's safe to say he never will be. Thank God for Dakota Fanning.

I wouldn't characterize War of the Worlds as a must-see movie. Personally, I managed to enjoy it, but I wouldn't go out of my way to persuade the naysayers and the Cruise-haters. I will say that this movie is cause for some relief, because if nothing else it demonstrates that Steven Spielberg isn't quite ready to be put out to pasture yet.