Steven Spielberg returns to the theme of extra-terrestrials...but these aren't the cute "phone home" variety.

This nasty lot - striding across the earth in vast 'tripods' - will turn you to dust with one blast of a dessicating killer ray.

HG Wells' 1898 story of vicious alien invaders on a merciless mission to enslave mankind was crying out for the broadbrush treatment at which Spielberg excels.

And he doesn't disappoint. We see the incomparably grim scenario of global mass murder unfold through the eyes of divorced Brooklyn dockworker Ray Ferrier (Cruise).

After witnessing the rise of one of the alien killing machines, effortlessly pulverising the neighbourhood, he gathers together young daughter Rachel (Fanning) and teenager Robbie (Chatwin).

Hijacking a truck, he heads north from New York to Boston...but the journey is fraught with danger as the Tripods relentlessly prowl the East Coast, destroying all in their path.

The story is utterly routine but what makes it sing is Spielberg's deft touch as a director of small family dynamics as well as a master of the grand-scale special effect.

Ferrier is no angel, barely has a relationship with his brooding son and cannot cope with his daughter's fragility in the face of such invincible evil.

It soom becomes apparent that Ray isn't going to defeat the aliens Independence Day-style, but is merely happy keeping his family out of their clutches as the stakes grow ever higher.

So we have car ferries crammed with refugees casually up-ended, spilling their human cargo into a river, and fleeing families clinically snuffed out as they scream for mercy.

It's a vision worthy of Dante with stunning setpiece after setpiece taking its toll on the viewer, left slumped in their seat an exhausted, breathless mess.

Aside from the grand spectacle of swivelling tripods laying waste to the land, Spielberg also quietly impresses with less grandstanding touches.

One memorable scene sees a camera pan 365 degrees about Ray's van as it careers down a wreck-littered freeway as the family fight a highly-charged row inside.

It's the work of a master...and Spielberg is rewarded by a rich blue collar character study from Cruise and other telling touches, including Tim Robbins making the flesh crawl as a creepy survivalist.

At a time when Hollywood blockbusters rarely deliver, this is up there with Batman Begins and Spider-Man 2 as glorious exceptions to the rule.

Miss it at your peril.

Tim Evans