The story takes place over a few days as Cruise just gets off work at his job on the seaside shipping yards lifting and placing shipping containers on and off of barges all day long. He goes home to have his ex-wife bitching at him a little about being late for his weekend with the kids and then his kids start giving him flack for being a shitty Dad and for having no food in the house.
Like any good father when this happens, he tells his ex-wife not to worry, tells the kids to order in and goes to sleep.
Shit starts hitting the fan when an electric storm starts shooting lightning down to the same spot in downtown Boston, which completely fries anything in a mile or so radius. Cars won't start, TVs are on the fritz. Telephones don't work. Of course, this opens a plot hole for the aliens to arrive and a future plot contradiction, but more on that later.
Here Cruise thinks he's going to get his kids to clean this mess up...
He goes downtown to see what is going on. In the middle of an intersection, through a series of earthquake-like activity, a hole opens up. Out comes a large tripod-like creature that indiscriminately starts shooting (and disintegrating every person in sight.) Cruise and everyone starts running for their lives. Such is the tone of the movie. It's one long chase run and hide sequence with a few breaks in the action to set up the new action.
Spoilers ahead...
Because he's stolen the only car that happens to work, which is a van that just had a fried solenoid replaced, Cruise and his kids make it to his ex-wife's house (she's out of town). Outside of the house, after several jet airliners crash in the neighborhood, he runs into a news crew that is running from the aliens yet still have the moxie to get all of it on tape, which leads to the big plot hole. Cruise is shown a tape of the aliens coming down in the lightning strikes, which is pretty cool except for the fact that the news crew had to be there at the time to record it, avoid their equipment from being fried and escape in a van that was probably fried, too. Oh well, no plot can be perfect.
End spoilers...
From there, they try to flee the area and be safe but mob mentality soon takes hold and it's a frantic struggle to stay alive in every scene after newly introduced characters get quickly vaporized or grabbed by the aliens. The alien's attacks start big and then go small as they get down and dirty to find humans hiding.
Along the way, Cruise's kids still manage to give him flack for doing things to keep them safe, but for the most part are pretty realistic portrayals of regular kids. Dakota Fanning gives an especially convincing turn as Cruise's 10-year-old daughter who suffers from claustrophobia.
So Cruise does everything to keep his kids safe, which got me thinking about what my Dad would do in a situation like that (My Dad when he was 40). I'm sure it would go something like this:
(Fleeing the house)
"Get your asses in the car!"
"Where in the hell did you kids put my flashlight?"
"You've got 60 seconds to get your asses in the car or I'm leaving you. Now one of you kids fill up this box with food and another grab a few cases of Budweiser out of the garage."
"Goddammit don't slam the door! I don't care if aliens are coming!"
"Don't stomp down the stairs!"
(In the car)
"Who fiddled with the radio?"
"Will you kids shut the hell up and do as I say?"
"If you kids don't shut up, I'm going to turn this car around and we'll get killed by the aliens. Now do you want that?"
But I digress (Just exaggerating Dad! Except for the beer part. He doesn'’t drink now, but when he was younger, he'’d buy extra cases if bad weather was coming. I can only imagine what he'’d do if aliens attacked)...
If anything, the film does suffer a little from the lack of characters that you feel any empathy for. The action all follows Cruise, so he's in every scene. This does make you care about his character, but it does make the other characters paper-thin. Only Tim Robbins stands out as a mentally-deranged former ambulance driver who helps Cruise and his family hide out.
"You must believe me! I know about the aliens because I've studied! Don't be glib!"
Tom Cruise does a good job of keeping things afloat. Critics complained that it was a little hard to picture Cruise as a working Dad, but I found no problem with it. In fact, I think that a lesser actor would have had a hard time keeping the audience engaged for the whole picture.
On the downside, the ending is a little predictable and it wraps up things a little too neatly. Also, the movie is a bit much to take. It's like watching Schindler's List with all the executions in front of you, but there is no magic list to keep certain people safe. The constant on the run danger feel got tiring after a while.
All in all, it's a roller coaster ride of a movie about what an everyday Joe would have to do to keep his family safe.
1 comment:
Does your brother get upset when you use his name in a context such as "everyday Joe"?
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