These days, I’m not much of a loyal Tom Cruise fan, but I happen to like some films he’s in when the cast around him gets to do some decent work around his not so silent takeover method of acting. That said, 2005’s War of the Worlds is pretty much Stephen Spielberg’s film to win or lose as he puts Cruise, the rest of the cast, some stellar visual effects and a mostly tensely coiled John Williams score to work in this updated version of the classic H.G. Wells science fiction story.

Save for some overuse of the “Hollywood escape” and still not yet patented Cruise running style in scenes where plenty of extras get vaporized or otherwise killed as the actor and his movie kids make a few too many narrow escapes (at least for the first part of the film) and a wee bit too much allegory on the director’s part, this is a solid little movie that still packs a bit of a punch…

Granted, you need to get used to Cruise owning much of the real estate in the scenes he’s in and yes, somehow being a focal point even in scenes where all hell is breaking loose. Granted, his Ray Ferrier character along with his children Rachel (Dakota Fanning) and Robbie (Justin Chatwin) are supposed to be the post-atomic family you want to keep your eyes on as they make good their escape from the Martians literally who’ve dropped into Earth for a heavy meal and some genocide on the side. But don’t expect to like any of them much if you haven’t seen this before and want one of those “perfect” family units (which just means you’ve not seen many Spielberg films). Ray’s a union crane operator living in New Jersey and divorced from his wife (Miranda Otto), who swings by at the beginning with the kids so Ray can watch them for the weekend while she and her new husband head up to Boston to see her parents. Of course, all those plans go straight into the trash bin as the aforementioned aliens zap out of the sky into those long-buried ships and commence a pretty dramatic attack.

That first assault is an incredible CG effects job by Industrial Light and Magic that manages to be intensely frightening yet thrilling as humans by the thousands are vaporized into ash or otherwise killed as energy blasts from the tripods lay waste to everything they hit. It’s bad enough seeing nearly every extra in a scene get powdered (save for their clothes swooping up into the air before floating down like laundry lost off a clothesline), but the climactic bridge/elevated roadway destruction as Ferrier and his kids escape in a stolen minivan is still a shot that gets me. It’s so well done (as are the bulk of the CG here) that you’ll get a chill down your spine thinking about how that would play out for anyone on that formerly stable structure. And you thought YOUR state’s bridges were falling down? Add some hungry horn-blowing aliens to the landscape and hope you took the day off sick AND live in a place with a basement level.

Before and as the Ferrier family make good their escape, we see that father and son aren’t exactly on amicable terms and this theme the film deals with in an odd manner as things progress. Robbie’s initial shock (and awe) as the invasion commences (“Are they terrorists?!”) turns to anger at his dad for running and not figuring out a way to help defeat the invaders despite all signs pointing to a a seriously unstoppable force to be reckoned with. When the trio reach his ex-wife’s home, you’d expect a quiet moment or two but Spielberg ratchets up the tension by having a silly fight over Cruise making sandwiches before dropping a plane out of the sky near the house in a great scene that’s done without showing the actual crash. The next morning we get to see the wreckage and briefly meet a news crew with an overly intrepid female reporter who shows Ferrier the aliens riding cold lightning down into those buried tripods. Although brief, this scene makes for a fine diversion as that news crew’s story might have been more compelling to watch than what happens with Ray and company afterwards.

A couple more close escapes and then during the film’s big night battle sequence, Robbie fights once more with Ray, runs away to join the fray and during the chaos, Tim Robbins pops up out of a farmhouse basement to save the day… but not really. His Harlan Ogilvy character is a strange bird indeed with what seems stranger thoughts about little Rachel (eww) and even stranger thoughts about being some sort of underground fighting force against the tripods. He, his somewhat twisted brain and his supply of peach schnapps (who has a supply of peach schnapps in their basement?) are no match for Ray’s strong will to keep himself and his daughter alive, however. After the basement is probed by an alien eye-snake then a group of curious Martians in a stellar hide and seek sequence, Harlan loses it after seeing what the aliens are doing with all those humans they haven’t zapped into dust and he’s out of the picture.

While taut and pretty well acted, this is where the film unwound for me. I’d have rather seen the fate of that news crew, any of Ray’s neighbors who made it out alive or anyone else than sit in a wet, cluttered basement with three bug-eyed actors bugging out over a few CG aliens spinning a bicycle wheel and leafing through black and white photos. Granted, an actual meeting of the minds wouldn’t be an E.T. moment for sure. But it seems that the Martians themselves weren’t munching on humans at all, but using them as fossil fuel for their fancy stridin’ machines. Speilberg makes that evident in a scene of a human getting skewered on the ground which seems oddly unnecessary save for shock value (although you don’t see anything but shaking limbs) as soon enough, Ray and Rachel are captured and taken for a little walk.

Cruise gets to play the “Aha!” hero of sorts here and it’s yet another case of the man wanting to have it all. Earlier in the film, it’s he who points out to the guy in the service station that replacing that mini-van’s solenoid would get it to run (thus giving the family a means to get the hell out of Dodge and survive), it’s Ray that gets to warble a song to Rachel to calm her nerves (while rattling the audiences), it’s Ray that finds that grenade belt in the tripod cage (and not the soldier also in there for who knows how long previously?), and it’s Ray that later bellows out “NO SHIELD!!” to a soldier on the ground during that last section of the film when John Williams finally gets to cut loose with some action film music in a great and too-brief battle sequence. What, soldiers trained to spot flaws in an enemy’s tactics know less that a crane operator? Well, Ray DOES see a lot of seagulls on the docks, I suppose… so score a big one for union labor, right? I remember seeing this film in a theater back then and most of the crowd cheering when that tripod went down hard. Being a soundtrack veteran for many years, I knew it was that one-two punch of Speilberg and Williams setting up the crowd and ILM delivering the knockout blow.

It’s also Ray who ends up the hero… at least for his formerly estranged family, but as the Morgan Freeman’s booming voice rolled over itself explaining why the Martians failed in their plans and the credits rolled (and more Williams bliss for the ears played), I wondered how the film would have worked as a longer mini-series along the lines of the hugely successful Speilberg-produced Band of Brothers on HBO. Granted, WotW was shot over a ridiculously tidy 73 days and yes indeed, is a massively entertaining film even by today’s bigger is better, faster more, more, more standards some expect every blockbuster to own up to. That said, I still wonder about that news crew, some of those fighting in that massive night battle and yep, Ray’s more interesting than he was neighbors and what they went through. But that’s the greatness of Spielberg when he’s firing on certain creative levels – you find yourself looking into each corner around the principals because he manages to make even a throwaway scene intriguing…