This reviewer is not a great fan of Spielberg or Cruise, at least not when they work together; Minority Report was overblown. But this second joint venture is nothing less than amazing. Both men have worked hard to make something extraordinary from the H. G. Wells novel (1898).
Cruise puts his all into the role of Ray Ferrier, a nobody, and worse still, an incompetent father. Incompetent he may be, but he clearly loves his children, and as such will do whatever it takes to keep them alive.
Spielberg deserves credit too, and not just for modernizing the source material with the latest CGI technology [far superior to the Best Special Effect Oscar-winning version by Byron Haskin (1953)]. He’s also added a new subtext. In the novel, Wells used aliens to represent the way rich countries impose their ways on the poor. In this version, the aliens appear to represent global terrorists.
Spielberg has thrown in elements from disaster, alien invasion, survival, and road movies. It all adds up to a very dark film in which destruction is all too near, and flight appears the only means of survival. Underlying the work is a sense of agoraphobia, implying that the only real safety is not to be found in numbers.
Amblin Entertainment

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
September 2005 issue