FROM:
http://www.zap2it.com/index/dvd/reviews ... 30,FF.html
By Norman Wilner
Panic. Death rays. Enormous, marauding alien machines. This is the way the world ends in Steven Spielberg's "War of the Worlds" ... and it's not even a little bit fun.
Instead of turning H.G. Wells' dour Victorian novel of alien invasion into the ultimate popcorn movie, or a thrill ride on a parallel with his "Jurassic Park" films, Spielberg has taken the material in the darkest possible direction: This, unapologetically, is a horror movie.
The action has been relocated to present-day Jersey, but the adaptation (by David Koepp, who scripted "Jurassic Park," and Josh Friedman) still manages to be true to Wells' intentions. It even bookends the film with passages from the novel, read by a steely Morgan Freeman.
Oh, yeah, and Tom Cruise is in it. He plays Ray Ferrier, a divorced dockworker who happens to have his kids over on the day the world ends. And that's about all the character development we're going to get, as the invasion forces Ray to gather up his surly teenage son (Justin Chatwin) and terrified younger daughter (Dakota Fanning) and run like hell.
Fans of the novel who feared Spielberg would sugarcoat the mercilessness of Wells' Martians -- as George Pal did in his candy-colored 1953 adaptation -- can relax. Spielberg hasn't softened the carnage in the least. Indeed, he's cranked it up to the highest possible level, depicting an unimaginable apocalypse in a calm and almost documentarian manner; with the rousing music kept to a minimum and the opportunities for human heroics few and far between. (The only truly wrong step is the ending, which -- like most of Spielberg's recent work - is allowed to run on a beat too far.)
This means, probably, that audiences wanting to see a disposable effects blockbuster are going to be disappointed: Stuff blows up, but it doesn't blow up the right way. Instead, the imagery borders on the truly nightmarish. Spielberg is working on another level here -- he doesn't seem to give a damn if people enjoy the ride. "War of the Worlds" may not be most people's idea of entertainment, but it's incredible filmmaking.
DreamWorks' enhanced-widescreen DVD offers a spectacularly faithful transfer, and your choice of DTS or Dolby Digital audio. The sole extra is a production featurette charting the creation of the alien design in the physical and virtual realms. It's part of a much larger documentary that's included on the second disc of the limited collector's edition, which -- rather frustratingly -- wasn't available for preview.