93 out of 130 people found the following review helpful:

Terrible

McClennan from , 1st July, 2005

If you can get over Tom Cruise being cast as a working class dockworker with a 16 year old then you might be able to turn a blind eye to what, upon reflection, is a poor effort from Speilberg. Shunted forward to fill the schedules of him and Cruise, whilst Indiana Jones 4 and MI:3 were delayed, it was shot in 72 days with ten weeks pre-production work and it shows. Take out the CGI and I don't really believe this film has anything to other over the likes of The Day After Tomorrow or possibly even Armageddon. Speilberg said that this is the most realistic film that he's ever shot, yet it has gaping holes running through it. Given that Speilberg hasn't produced a really good film since Schindler's List I think his Abraham Lincoln biopic may be his last shot at a good film because on his blockbusters I think he's lost it and they were his strength. There's so much that could be ripped apart in this film and I'm aware that I may be over-critical but the more I think about it the more that this film sucks, and I'm not putting an extra bonus point on just for the CGI.

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49 out of 69 people found the following review helpful:

Truly rubbish

Ed from London, England, 2nd July, 2005

This was such a dissapointment, I wasn't expecting high art but even as a big money film, this was almost too poor for words. A nonsensce script that was full of holes, Video cameras and car headlights working in a electrical blackout, a totally unmotivated parting of two main characters (to illistrate a laboured point about Cruise's parenting skills) leading to an unexplained introduction to Tim Robbins character which in turn leads to a truly unsubtle justification for Guanatamo Bay to mention just a few. The real shame of it is that the two moments of genuine tension are ruined because the rest of the story telling is so cheap the film doesn't earn it. Almost unmitigatted rubbish from a Director who must know that this is substandard. The ending is so stupid and unearned that people were laughing when I watched it, I would have joined them had I not been rueing the fact that I had improved the Box Office by one. Do not bother with this film!

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42 out of 48 people found the following review helpful:

*Profoundly* disappointed.

Stuart Viewer from Bristol, 27th April, 2006

I have seen a lot of films, but this one was ‘the’ biggest disappointment to me! The H.G.Wells classic has been turned into a farce. When you watch the film you are constantly asking yourself questions; which the film never answers and the director seems to think is OK. Another problem is that the character profiles are not properly rounded, which means they behave erratically and against type.. The screaming daughter is a classic example of contradictions. (utterly hysterical at start and calmer when things are mental). My penultimate comment is the number of oddities; TOO MANY.. Son walks out of destroyed house with 747 in bits at yet he is calm and unperturbed! Finally I must comment about the number of plot holes; I would go so far as to say, “what plot”.. The reason I say that is that most of the film relies very heavily on peoples existing knowledge of the book War of the Worlds.. {read the book and you will have more enjoyment} [I begrudgingly scored the film 3 Stars, ONLY because of the special effects – As I write I think I should of scored it 2!)

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41 out of 51 people found the following review helpful:

War of Attrition

RJTaylor from , 7th September, 2005

Within film anything is possible. You can make cars fly through the air, the dead come back to life and aliens take over the universe. No problem. And you can make the audience believe all this, provided you set out your own rules and play by them throughout. You'd have thought Steven Spielberg would know this, but sadly not. The plot of WotW hinges heavily on the incapacitation of all machinery: Cars, electronics, even Tom Cruise's Omega watch, (which we could assume is automatic rather than battery driven). So why, minutes later, do we see some guy running down the street using a gatdam *video camera* to record the attack on his town? And not only this, Spielberg rubs our noses in it by giving us a full-frame shot of the camera's screen after it's dropped to the floor, it's operator having been zapped by the monsters. It was this that initially caused me to cast a cynical eye over the integrity of the plot, but it wasn't a one-off. I found myself being slowly worn down by the general contempt that Spielberg seems to have for the audience. As for the ending, it may have been faithful to the original story, but it made the whole humans-v-aliens struggle, (and therefore the raison d'etre of the whole film,) utterly pointless.

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War of the worlds

OldRenny from , 18th March, 2010

A gripping film start to finish with good special effects. Itells the tale of how the human race fight to survive against the Martians and their powerful machines when they suddenly appear on earth. Sci Fi terrorist's have met their match here on earth,but are not defeated by any mechanichal weapons available but by a force we deal with daily that wipes them out but you have to watch to the end?????

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total rubbish

Bobert from , 9th February, 2010

Firstly, if you think this has ANYTHING to do with H G Wells' fantastic novel, you are mistaken, as was myself. It should be classed as a b movie with expensive fx. Dakota Fanning is the best actor in the film, but I would have changed my agent. The story runs as a list of ideas stuck together with paper glue, and the important fell of the board. It only manages to portraits Americans as being stupid and selfish. I love H G Wells' war of the wars, so did not have high hopes for the film, but even those have been crushed.

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Zzzzzzzzzzz

A Customer from Chatteris, 28th January, 2010

Shoulda been, coulda been......wasn't. Dire. Come on Tom....you can do so much better.

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*** May contain spoilers ***

highly underated

Spark123 from , 16th January, 2010

why has this got so many terrible reviews? This to me was a very intersting take on alien invasion films. Instead of seeing the same old invasion where we see the whole picture and how they somehow destroys all the aliens, you see a film all about one family and their fight for survival and instead of them killing the aliens it quite realistically shows how they die. Altogether thi is a great film and highly underated. So what if its not shindlers list, spielburg isn't going to be able to make films of that standard for everything he does

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