This is a big, dumb action movie. When I say it is a big, dumb action movie, I mean that the emphasis seemed to be on presenting action scenes over any kind of plot. Instead it is mostly about destruction caused by the aliens and a guy running away from that. Most of this review is hidden in the spoilers which give away major plot points.
This is a good movie to have fun pointing out stupid things the main characters do and inconsistencies. There are some good scenes, but overall it is so disjointed that the big-budget effects and hundreds of extras (who always look like extras) do little to redeem the movie. War of the Worlds is one reason no big-budget movies received Oscar nominations. I have to give it a D+, making this the worst movie of 2005.
During the first appearance of the aliens there is an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), an actual phenomenon usually associated with nuclear explosions, which causes a voltage surge that fries just about anything electronic. Not only does the electricity go out, but phones, cars, and everything else electronic stops working. However, a few minutes later when the the alien ship shows up, suddenly people are taking pictures and Speilberg zooms in on the viewfinder of a dropped video camera capturing the destruction. The movie isn’t even faithful to its own constructs.
The rest of the movie isn’t much better. Tom Cruise ends up in the only car that works because he knew to change out the solenoid. But the car radio works too. Did it just blow solenoids? Nobody else figures that out? A plane runs into a house they're staying in and the nose, an engine, and landing gear are lying in the front yard (I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be that close), but the car is just fine! Jump in kids! Then they drive down a perfectly clear path just the size of the car.
Speilberg seems to have wanted to have scenes of destruction in the city, in the country, on a boat, and some army stuff thrown in. So the characters seem to run from one storyboard to the next, except there’s not really a story. A house in the country is thoroughly inspected by the aliens, but a townhouse in Boston is untouched? At one point Cruise runs into an old friend and her daughter. But within minutes they are gone. What was that about? The opening establishes that Cruise is the best crane operator at a container yard, so you might think that would come in handy later, but it is never revisited. So what was the point of that? Cruise kills someone who is about to give away his position to the aliens and within minutes is running around outside in the open where he is spotted and captured by the aliens.
Lastly, the problem with War of the Worlds is there is no plot. The whole movie is just a portrait of destruction. The humans are able to get the best of the aliens in a few isolated cases, but we all know that what really stops the aliens is a virus. So the movie isn’t really about anything other than watching things blow up and waiting until the virus can do its work. It’s as if the shark in Jaws had just died of natural causes at the end of the movie.