"War of the Worlds"

There's plenty more, most notably a weird interlude in which Tim Robbins appears as a deranged freedom fighter who thinks he's going to get the better of the aliens via a surprise shotgun attack. (This scene also includes a bizarre exchange between Robbins and Fanning notable for its not-so-subtle child-molester vibe.) And did I mention the sequence in which a crazed, terrified guy claws through a broken windshield with his bare hands?

Obviously, all of these incidents and images are serving some greater purpose in Spielberg's mind, if not actually on the screen. Just as it has been decreed, ad nauseam, that all '50s sci-fi movies are actually about the fear of communism, Spielberg's "War of the Worlds" must certainly be about our fear of terrorism. In a recent Reuters article, Spielberg himself said the movie is "certainly about Americans fleeing for their lives, being attacked for no reason, having no idea why they are being attacked and who is attacking them."

But in addition to all that heavy-handed symbolism, there's a sadistic, mean-spirited vapor hovering around "War of the Worlds." I suspect Spielberg wants to cover all the bases: "War of the Worlds" can be a political movie for those who want to see it as such, and a mindless entertainment for everyone else. But no matter how dazzling or advanced its special effects are, it's far less sophisticated than Byron Haskin and George Pal's 1953 version of the same material.

That "War of the Worlds" is usually treated as a parable of Cold War fears, but I think that's the laziest reading of the picture. Haskin is more interested in human nature than he is in politics -- specifically, the possibility that human beings are their own worst enemies. But he also recognizes that we can overcome our worst impulses. Spielberg shows a similar distrust of humankind, specifically in a scene in which throngs of zombielike citizens, driven mad by their own fear, descend upon the car (the only working vehicle around) that Ray has managed to get a hold of. (A few of them dive into it headfirst through a back window, as Fanning screams in terror.) But compare that blinking neon message-moment with one brief shot that Haskin gives us: A child pilfers from an upturned ice-cream cart as the camera pans slowly to a hungry dog lapping up some of the melted contents -- an image that blurs innocence and savagery in a way that no scrap of footage in this modern "War of the Worlds" comes close to.

And in the midst of all this, where is Tom Cruise? Cruise, who has recently gotten so much attention for his love life, his wacko spiritual beliefs and his Oprah antics, is barely a presence in this monstrosity of a movie. The picture's recurring question, underlined repeatedly by the way Cruise screws up his face in an expression of extreme concentration, is, "How far will we go to protect our children?" That's supposed to be a deep, philosophical question, but it's actually a fairly hollow one. (Most people who have kids already know they'd go pretty far; and plenty of people without kids would go pretty far to protect other people's kids, too.)

At one point, just after Cruise has witnessed the first incident of alien-invasion horror, he stares at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, trying to get a handle on what he's just seen, and on the man he has now become. Wild-eyed, he scrutinizes his dusty, terrified visage. He's acting so hard the bones nearly pop out of his skin. It's not a good scene, but it's the only one in the picture where we get a gut sense that human lives are at stake. The rest of "War of the Worlds" is just smoke, mirrors and a once-great filmmaker's assumption that it's OK to mine real-life tragedy for the sake of movie magic. Welcome to blockbuster hell.

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