Of all the early sci-fi/adventure novels by Verne, Wells and co, a large number of which I seem to've read somewhere along the line between primary school and now, The War of the Worlds has always stood out, even though my memory of it is fairly vague. I saw one of the 1950s versions on video when quite young (I think there was a whole series, and I happened to watch the first one) and it left a strong impression - it was frightening. The book also left me quite uneasy, in part because of what I recall as being its somewhat distanced, clinical air of reportage (though I presumably didn't think about it in quite those terms back then). And I also knew the story of the whole Orson Welles radio broadcast thing, which added to the intrigue surrounding the book.
So, when I came to watch this adaptation, I considered it auspicious when the introductory prologue (after the pull-back shot from microsopic view to universe) consisted of an old-fashioned montage and reassuringly sonorous male 'historical' voiceover. The film proper gets off to a good start, too - I didn't mind that it focused on Tom Cruise and his family, rather than depicting Pentagon generals or fighter pilots or their ilk...in fact, this seemed a good approach given that, in the end, it's the air itself which brings the invaders undone rather than any technological might or scientific nous on humanity's part (though Spielberg can't resist giving us the sight of the military shooting down one of the tripods after its shields fail, complete with suitably vanquished - ie, dead ('the only good alien's a dead alien!'; wrong movie, I know...) - alien emerging at the end).
The scenes of destruction get the job done, and there's a pervasive unsettling feeling to much of the film (eg, the ghostly shots of the family's faces early on, the menacing fellow who takes Ray and Rachel into his basement, and particularly the culmination of that encounter), which is suitable. But the character arcs are predictable and not entirely convincing, and with the focus on the individuals and not on larger-than-life heroes, that proves to be a telling flaw. As a film crit might say, three stars out of five.
