Sci-Fi/Thriller — 116 min — Directed by Steven Spielberg
Cast: Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Justin Chatwin, Tim Robbins, Rick Gonzalez, Yul Vazquez

Ray Ferrier is a working class man living in New Jersey. He’s estranged from his family, his life isn’t in order, and he’s too caught up with himself. But the unthinkable and, ultimately, the unexpected happens to him in an extraordinary sense. His small town life is shaken violently by the arrival of destructive intruders: Aliens which have come en masse to destroy Earth. As they plow through the country in a wave of mass destruction and violence, Ray must come to the defense of his children. As the world must fend for itself by a new and very advanced enemy not of this world, it’s inhabitants must save humanity from a far greater force that threatens to destroy it.

Allright. What we have here is a story that just is too well known. Not that the movie is bad, but there just are no surprises at all. Well, there are some, they’re just not in the plot, which is good, or I would be complaining about that. We follow Tom Cruise along the trip, and there are almost zero heroics from him, which is good. Speilberg has chosen to concentrate on Tom keeping his family safe, instead of going for the massive counter-attacks by military on a large scale. We only get to see what happens close to Tom, and there’s almost no information on what’s going on elsewhere. I like that, because it seems plausible, and you can feel the hopelessness people feel when confronted by the pods. There’s no way, but to die. I think I wouldn’t have minded if they had changed the ending, because you knew that it was coming, just a matter of when. It could have been a nice surprise to have something else happen. Sure, it would have made H.G. Wells spin in his grave, but I would have enjoyed it so much more, not knowing the ending. It kinda… killed the suspense. And the Aliens not knowing Biology 101… Yeah, they would have known about that.

The Pods are awesome, and the CGI-work is flawless, as far as I can tell. If you took footage back 20 years and showed it to people, they would swear it was real. Yeah, it is that good. The Aliens themselves, are something in between Alien and the smaller Starship Troopers bugs. Exploding houses, flying cars and all such collateral damage going on is freaking amazing!

My Rating: 7/10