Three-time Oscar� winner Steven Spielberg's $582 million pulse-pounding movie event War Of The Worlds smashes its way onto DVD. In his biggest box office opening ever, Tom Cruise leads an all-star cast on an emotionally riveting and unrelenting thrill ride as a father who fights to save his family from a deadly alien invasion. This contemporary retelling of H.G. Wells' seminal sci-fi classic, War Of The Worlds also stars Dakota Fanning, and Academy Award� winner Tim Robbins.

Whether we're talking Independence Day or the TV series 'V' (which Independence Day plagiarized outright), Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Day The Earth Stood Still, The Thing or even the Alien films; the concept of mankind falling prey to a dominant alien species is one that seems to massage the film-going public's paranoia in a highly profitable way. Despite attempts at originality, all alien invasion films unavoidably riff on the one original story that spawned them: H.G Wells' The War of the Worlds.

A member of the socialist Fabian society in London, H.G Wells' writing allowed him to espouse his left wing ideals on the state of contemporary society and politics within the confines of a fantasy adventure story. Wells was inspired to write 'The War of the Worlds', ostensibly a damning of British Colonialism, after a conversation with his brother, regarding the 8,000 Aboriginal inhabitants of Tasmania who were decimated after the arrival of English settlers in Australia. Wells' idea for 'The War of the Worlds' sprang from the thought of what might happen if such an indifferent and technologically superior race was to land in England and exterminate the populous with such unsympathetic determination.

Orson Welles' 1938 Halloween radio play of the same name set the scene for the alien invasion at Grover's Mill, New Jersey. This stateside tailoring of the quintessentially English story cemented the pre-WWII paranoia that was latent in the hearts of the American public, when the broadcast caused widespread panic and mass evacuations. George Pal's 1958 film version (like Orson Welles' radio play) also set the invasion at Grover's Mill, New Jersey and tapped into the cold-war paranoia that was creeping across the globe. Fast-forward 46 years and uber-auteur Steven Spielberg is exploiting post-9/11 tensions in his own interpretation of the story: mixing hard-core science fiction and intimate familial drama.

In this latter, screenwriter David Koepp has (once again) set the U.S invasion epicenter in New Jersey, focusing the story on Ray Ferrier (Cruise) a crane operator at the local dockyards who's late picking up his young daughter Rachel (Fanning) and teenage son Robbie (Chatwin) from ex-wife Mary-Anne (Otto) for a rare weekend stay with their Dad. This further widens the already huge gap between 'dead-beat Dad' Ray and his kids, who think their father is an irresponsible, self-centred loser. After a ferocious lightening storm strikes in the town centre, the inhabitants worst nightmares are realized as huge 'Tripods' � alien walkers, ascend from deep underground and begin to systematically destroy every living thing in their path. A terrified and dumbstruck Ray loads his kids into the only working truck he can steal and they hurriedly evacuate as the Tripods advance, destroying everything behind them. Thinking that he's not up to the task of looking after his kids in a crisis, Ray heads for Boston in order to drop off his kids with someone infinitely more responsible than he is, his ex-wife. But in the ordeal that awaits Ray, he begins to find a semblance of the fatherhood that he's lost and therefore some kind of redemption; to become the sort of father he should have been all along.

There are some great performances here; most noteworthy is Fanning, who's extraordinarily naturalistic as Rachel, particularly in her opening scenes with Cruise.

Cruise is always willing to take risks in his roles and in the kinds of films he appears in (which is something he doesn't get nearly enough credit for) and he's always up for portraying less-than-likeable characters, yet somehow he always allows an audience to connect. This has been most obvious in roles like P.T. Anderson's Magnolia (the misogynistic Frank TJ Mackey was a role that could well have backfired) and in Michael Mann's Collateral as the sociopath killer Vincent. Here, as deeply flawed, not-so-great father Ray Ferrier, Cruise is in top form and make no mistake, he's no action hero, Cruise plays him as an average guy just trying to keep his family alive.

Typically for Spielberg, family is the primary theme here yet the film's undeniable attractions are its set pieces. There is no other filmmaker alive today who can pull off an action set piece as well as Spielberg and once the films spectacle kicks into high gear, it is jaw dropping. In keeping with the disturbing and dark tone, the destruction comes thick and fast and there are many sequences that stick in the mind such as a particularly harrowing sequence featuring a Tripod attacking a car ferry laden with hundreds of survivors and a surreal sequence featuring captured survivors and their ultimate use for the alien invaders. Longtime Spielberg collaborator Janusz Kaminski's cinematography in these sequences is surprisingly similar to the style he employed with Saving Private Ryan, shooting handheld, gritty and low, making the audience feel like eyewitnesses rather than mere observers. For the most part, everything is shot from the perspective of Ray and his family, if they don't see it, we don't see it. This almost-documentary style works particularly well during the first Tripod attack scene as people are disintegrated and turned to ash as they run in terror; their ashen remains and shredded clothing billow in the wind and settle on the survivors who run behind them. This is a particularly visceral sequence amplified all the more by the familiar 9/11 images of ghost-people covered with ash. Although the story's similarity to H.G Wells' original is tenuous, there are major plot parallels and all in all, it's an admirable update. The tone (and denouement) of the book remains intact, as do the formidable images of the Tripods and the Red Weed. It's also worth noting that this film took seven months to complete, from cameras first rolling in 2004 to the release in theatres for summer 2005; a stunning achievement for any filmmaker but given that this was the biggest budget Spielberg's worked with to date, it's no mean feat.

War of the Worlds shows that Spielberg can still roll this kind of accomplished entertainment out of his sleeves in a matter of months, at a time when many of his contemporaries (Revenge of the Sith anyone?) could barely manage a passable intelligent summer blockbuster. War of the Worlds is a visually stunning, disturbing and visceral piece of work and a fitting addition to the finer films in Spielberg's oeuvre.


THE TWO-DISC WAR OF THE WORLDS SPECIAL EDITION DVD BONUS MATERIALS

�  REVISITING THE INVASION

Marking their second film collaboration, Spielberg and Cruise recount their on-set experiences and reveal their approach to telling the personal story at the heart of this epic odyssey.

�  THE H.G. WELLS LEGACY

A portrait of the acclaimed author with accounts from his family, Spielberg and War of the Worlds screenwriter David Koepp exploring the legacy of H.G. Wells' classic novel from its initial conception through its various adaptations.

�  STEVEN SPIELBERG AND THE ORIGINAL WAR OF THE WORLDS

Paying homage to the original film in his own adaptation of the H.G. Wells book, Spielberg invited Gene Barry and Ann Robinson of the original 1953 film, to make a cameo appearance in War of the Worlds. In this program, Barry and Robinson share their experiences - past and present - of filming H.G. Wells' epic story of alien invasions.

�  CHARACTERS: THE FAMILY UNIT

Spielberg and Cruise discuss the emotional core of the film: the Ferrier family portrayed by Cruise (Ray Ferrier), Fanning (Rachel Ferrier), Chatwin (Robbie Ferrier) and Otto (Mary Ann, Ray's ex-wife).

�  PRE-VISUALIZATION

A rare look at Spielberg in pre-production as he designs the film's action sequences on computer through a process called "pre-visualization," in which traditional storyboards are animated into 3D digital sequences that depict not only what a scene will look like, but reveal every aspect of a given location, including sets, actors, cameras and crew.

�  PRODUCTION DIARIES: EAST COAST

Viewers join the cast and crew on a whirlwind shooting tour of the Eastern Seaboard from Newark and Bayonne to Brooklyn, up the Hudson to Naugatuck, Connecticut, and onto Athens, New York, and ending in eastern Virginia. The diary is in two parts, one highlighting the beginning of the invasion and the second following the Ferrier family into exile.