reVIEW (20)
WAR OF THE WORLDS

With the latest Body Snatchers redux, The Invasion, about to hit theatres, I thought to look back at another recent alien invasion redux.

Steven Spielberg is the undisputed Popcorn Movie King: exhibits A and B—Raiders of the Lost Ark and Jurassic Park. (By Popcorn Movie, I mean a movie that’s fun, and fun to watch, doesn’t have any deep moral truths in it, but doesn’t insult the audience’s intelligence, either.)
And though there have been pretenders to the throne (Roland Emmerich: Independence Day and Godzilla; Stephen Sommers: The Mummy films and Van Helsing), and an upstart challenger (Kerry Conran: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow), Spielberg still sits squarely on the throne.
It is in the milieu of the Popcorn Movie where Spielberg’s admittedly manipulative brand of storytelling is most at home, the button-pushing and emotion-cueing, welcome, and in point of fact, expected by the Popcorn Audience.
Spielberg’s post-millennial redux of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds however, is not a Popcorn Movie.

The thing is, though War is by no stretch of the imagination, a horrible movie, it really isn’t all that fun to watch. In this updated, Americanized version of Wells’ tale, Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) is a divorced father in charge of his two children, Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and Rachel (Dakota Fanning), for the weekend. This, of course, the weekend that cruel, bloodthirsty aliens decide to put their millennia-old plan of territorial take-over into effect.
Taking a page from M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs, we are treated to the Everyman’s point of view of a global crisis.
In the past, protagonists of movies of this ilk were either military men or scientists, by virtue of their profession, at the forefront of the action. Alternately, if they were civilians, they would still invariably find themselves in the middle of things, reluctant heroes, pivotal roles thrust upon them, the fate of humanity in their hands.
In War, as in Signs, the main characters are on the far-flung periphery, their motivation, to weather the storm. To survive. Thoughts of “How are we going to stop this alien invasion?” dwarfed by questions like, “How do we get to Boston?” and “What’s my daughter going to eat if she’s allergic to peanut butter?”
Of course, given that this is a Steven Spielberg film, it’s got a whole lot of Hollywood in its celluloid DNA. It is, actually, rather like the Hollywood version of Signs. And I mean that in the best and worst possible ways.

It’s got all the gee-whiz-bang CGI explosions and property damage you could ask for (the sequences of the tripods in urban decimation mode are some of the most heart-stuttering, jaw-dropping scenes I’ve seen in any alien invasion movie), as well as characters so painfully Everyman, they’re generic.
What we know of Ray is the barest glimmer of a personality. All we know is, his children don’t really know who he is. Well, kids, to paraphrase Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, You are not alone.
Ray’s kids, meanwhile, are the Rebellious, Angry Teen and Screaming, High-Strung Little Girl. Not much hope there, either.
In the void of any honest emotional connection with the film’s characters, the audience is left to do the Everyman thing and project themselves onto the scenario, which sometimes works, and more often doesn’t.
But given the Hollywood genes in War, it’s no surprise that Ray, Everyman schmoe that he is, still somehow manages to, a) damage a tripod with an axe, when trained military forces couldn’t seem to dent it with heavy artillery, and b) fortuitously find some grenades just when they can most come in handy.

Which is not to say Spielberg’s War isn’t worth its price of admission: if cars and buildings going boom are your thing, hey, knock yourself out. And there is some truly evil camerawork (undoubtedly computer-aided) as Ray and kids make their exodus from the city on the freeway, courtesy of long-time Spielberg cinematographer Janusz Kaminski.
It’s just that, as I said, it isn’t really fun to watch.
It’s isn’t fun seeing people get vaporized, or worse, turn on each other for a vehicle. Now, if this had been some sort of anti-war Statement, then perhaps I would have seen the point. But it isn’t.
It isn’t a Popcorn Movie. It isn’t a moving story of real, tangible individuals in a crisis (as was Signs). It isn’t a Statement Film.
So, in the end, I have to ask, What is it, then?

Parting Shot: Are all Earth-invading species inherently stupid? In Signs, a race whose Kryptonite is water attacks a planet that is 75% water. In War of the Worlds, they planned millennia for this, and didn’t think to bring along some cold medicine? Haven’t these people heard of advance scouts?

(War of the Worlds OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

(The above review was previously published in 2005 under the title, “Sound and Fury.”)

reVIEW (9)
HIDE AND SEEK

Hide and Seek is the story of psychologist David Callaway (Robert De Niro), whose wife (Amy Irving) loses her life suddenly and tragically, forcing him to not only cope with the loss, but care for their little girl Emily (Dakota Fanning). One move to upstate New York later, and Emily is having visitations from her new friend Charlie, and the expected strange goings-on begin.

The central riddle of Hide and Seek, of course, involves Charlie and his true nature. Is it supernatural, natural, or psychological? The big problem with the film is, the answer is painfully transparent, and the underlying reason for it, ultimately prosaic. To the credit of director John Polson (Swimf@n) and scriptwriter Ari Schlossberg, the clues are present, but there really isn’t much of a mystery here. A senile Angela Lansbury could solve this one without breaking a sweat.
And the red herrings are, at best, negligible. Admittedly, I’ve seen worse: the awkward and obvious herrings of Jane Campion’s In The Cut and Robert Zemeckis’ What Lies Beneath readily come to mind. And though a mystery’s red herring is supposed to distract you from the real solution, the herrings in Hide and Seek are instantly dismissable, as not only do they cross into the too-obvious zone, but the true answer is just so evident, that once you’ve latched onto it, you’ll be like a dog reluctant to give up its bone.

One of the other tragedies of Hide and Seek is that not only is talent of the caliber of a De Niro wasted here, but that of Oscar nominee Elizabeth Shue (for Leaving Las Vegas) and Famke Janssen (who did more as Michael Douglas’ injured wife in Don’t Say A Word than she ends up doing here) as well. Shue and Janssen don’t really play characters; they play plot necessities, the possible romantic interest, and the younger colleague/former student. We don’t really know much about them beyond the barest skeleton of a thumbnail sketch, and their on-screen time is limited, at best, visible only when the story’s events require their presence.
The lion’s share of Hide and Seek is handed over to De Niro and Fanning, which wouldn’t have been such a bad thing, if only De Niro had submitted more than the passably serviceable performance he gives here, and Fanning had done more than just steal a page from Christina Ricci’s Wednesday Addams, looking all gloomy and morose, like a pre-teen believer in heroin chic. One never really gets the sense of the presumably tremendous psychological weight these characters must be toiling under. In the end, everything is terribly mediocre and not very thrilling.

Interestingly enough, the space in which Hide and Seek operates is the same territory masterfully staked out by a certain kind of film from the recent Asian horror cinema boom. However, there is far more style and flair in Kim Ji-woon’s Janghwa, Hongryeon (A Tale of Two Sisters) or Park Ki-hyung’s Acacia, than in this piece of assembly-line Hollywood masquerading as a thriller.
Polson’s direction is casual when it should be taut. There is never any sense of something extraordinary taking place here. Instead, due to the throw-away manner in which the material is approached, it’s almost as if the filmmakers are saying, Nothing to worry about, this happens every day.

Any film should be involving, a mystery perhaps even more so. It should have the ability to suck you into its world, to subsume the audience into its twists and tangles, making you wonder, all the way until the final frame. It should be able to get you to participate in its game, get you to try and solve its riddle, to look as hard as you can for the hidden solution.
In Hide and Seek, with its answer plain to see, Polson and company don’t seem to care, one way or the other, if you choose to play their game. Well, all I can say to that is four simple words: sit this one out.

(The above review was previously published under the title “Sit This One Out.”)

(Hide and Seek OS courtesy of impawards.com.)