3 Legged Aliens aka War of The Worlds
As I watched this movie, the fact that Tom Cruise is a Scientology freak is never far from my mind. I kept thinking to myself - how much of this bulls**t does he really believe in?? And as I watched him running, panting, and crying onscreen, I was also wondering why he went hopping mad over one Katie Holmes - so really, my mind was only half on that show throughout.
Then again, one only needs half a brain to watch this movie. There are some disturbing images - those tripod alien thingies sucking human blood and spewing all over the devastated land - like mechanical versions of (huge) vampires. Also the much talked about references to the 9-11 disaster and the recent Asian tsunami. But nothing beats the screaming child actor (forgot her name) who was Tom’s daughter. Her various screams throughout the movie jolted me serveral times out of my reverie that I wanted to murder her. In fact, she was so irritating that I wished Tom had murdered her instead of the wacko militia man, played by Susan Sarandon’s hubby (forgot his name too).
The abrupt and strange ending left half the cinema scratching their heads. This was so unlike all other alien movies - there was no brilliant human plan to defeat the invaders (like Independence Day), and Tom never lifted a finger to fight them (except in self defence) - and spent the movie perpetually on the run, and the aliens basically self-destructed after sucking our blood (that was what Morgan Freeman was trying to say, at the end). It was anti-climatic, to say the least.
And Tom does not help the movie by looking older, and less glamourous than his Top Gun self.
Rating: 3 boos out of 5
Good review. If I were undecided whether to watch Tom’s latest movie or not, I would’ve given it a ‘pass’ based on your review. I’ve increasingly lost interest on Tom since his MI:1 movie. Before reading your review, I thought it (WOW) will be at least as good as ‘Independence Day’. I think he and Spielberg knew that they made a crappy movie and so they had to create a hype before the movie’s premiere. The hype being his schizophrenic-like revelation that he’s in love. I think it’s mid-life crisis but anyway, he says potato, I say poh-tah-toh. His gimmick worked, last time I checked, ticket sales are almost US$200 million, not including the July 4th weekend. I wonder what he’ll do for his next movie, grow a few inches taller?
Comment by liz — July 7, 2005 @ 9:42 am