Surprisingly, Tom Cruise is up to the challenge here – that bewildered anger he specializes in finds an unexpectedly credible channel in the role of a frustrated father trying to save his two kids … from armageddon. Dakota Fanning is so eerily brilliant that I was not only impressed by her performance, but came to believe that it is but a matter of time before she is elected Galactic Overlord, and begins her centuries-long rule over us all. Things start to sour a little when Cruise and Fanning take shelter in a farmhouse basement owned by Tim Robbins, already mid-descent into insanity. Robbins trots out the bug-eyed grimace that people mistook for acting in Mystic River, and he really just doesn't need to be there in the first place. Even Robbins doesn't sink the ship, though. Since Spielberg doesn't do anything on a small scale (even his farts are accompanied by foundation-shaking explosions and/or lightning), when he tanks a movie, he really fucking tanks a movie. In the space of the film's last 12 minutes or so, he so comprehensively stinks things up that, as a viewer, you instantly go from watching one of the best films ever made to watching a complete piece of horseshit. Why Spielberg always and inevitably ruins his films is a great cinematic mystery. He is arguably more capable than any director, from any era, of producing greatness. Yet he always fucks it up. And with War of the Worlds, the sudden qualitative about-face is stunning. It's like having the best sex of your life for 90 minutes, and then instead of achieving orgasm, your vagina falls off, sluices off the bed, and lands in a pail of putrid mopwater. How does Spielberg achieve this mighty slamming-of-the-brakes? First, by allowing the narrative to degenerate into illogical, ambiguous nonsense. Perhaps he had raised the stakes so high that the only way to satisfactorily resolve the story would have been to blow up the universe, which obviously he'd never do. Instead, he lets the story just sort of peter out. Then, having performed fuck-you #1, he proceeds to reverse one of the most impressive plot points in the film: the apparent death of Cruise's son. When the fucking kid shows up, unscathed, happy to see his family, etcetera, at the end, I actually felt betrayed. Spielberg has to put a happy face on fucking everything. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if the end of Munich shows the slain Israeli athletes returning home to hug their parents.
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