War of the Worlds **** (2005, Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Tim Robbins) – Classic Movie Review 525

Relentlessly efficient, hyper-adrenalin-charged and with seamless special effects, director Steven Spielberg’s chilling, heart-pounding monster movie took its rightful place as the 2005 summer number one blockbuster.

Loosely based on the novel by H G Wells, it remakes the beloved 1953 version The War of the Worlds, which starred Gene Barry and Ann Robinson, whose last roles are as the grandfather and the grandmother in this version. It very creditably adds to this version but doesn’t replace it.

Tom Cruise plays a single dad who has to try to live long enough to protect his kids (Justin Chatwin, Dakota Fanning) when all around them are being fried by really unfriendly aliens.

Looking unusually grim and determined, Cruise does very well by his everyman in trouble role, Fanning acts her little socks off and screams like a good ’un, and Tim Robbins hams it up as a crazy man who shelters them.

The best bits are the scary suspense set pieces (the tripods’ invasion, the uprooting of a river ferry and a cat-and-mouse game with an alien probe), which are handled by Spielberg with all of his usual mastery of the cinema and technique.

Gene Barry died on December 9 2009, aged 90.

Ann Robinson was born on 25 May 1929 in Hollywood and still enjoys being a regular fixture at sci-fi conventions and autograph shows. She reprised her Sylvia Van Buren character in 1988’s weekly TV series War of the Worlds (1988), 35 years after the 1953 version. 

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 (C) Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Film Review 525 derekwinnert.com