OBLIVION REVIEW

About The Movie:

Tom Cruise stars in Oblivion, an original and groundbreaking cinematic event from the visionary director of TRON: Legacy and producers of Rise of the Planet of the Apes. On a spectacular future Earth that has evolved beyond recognition, one man’s confrontation with the past will lead him on a journey of redemption and discovery as he battles to save mankind.

2077: Jack Harper (Cruise) serves as a security repairmen stationed on an evacuated Earth. Part of a massive operation to extract vital resources after decades of war with a terrifying alien threat who still scavenges what’s left of our planet, Jack’s mission is almost complete. In a matter of two weeks, he will join the remaining survivors on a lunar colony far from the war-torn world he has long called home.

Living in and patrolling the breathtaking skies from thousands of feet above, Jack’s soaring existence is brought crashing down after he rescues a beautiful stranger from a downed spacecraft. Drawn to Jack through a connection that transcends logic, her arrival triggers a chain of events that forces him to question everything he thought he knew. With a reality that is shattered as he discovers shocking truths that connect him to Earth of the past, Jack will be pushed to a heroism he didn’t know he contained within. The fate of humanity now rests solely in the hands of a man who believed our world was soon to be lost forever.

What Is Good/Bad About The Movie:

The biggest issue Oblivion faces is that it believes it is smarter than it really is as it doesn't take much to put the pieces of the puzzle together. The film seems to work against itself, by giving away too many details in the trailer and then clouding its own vision with redundancies and needless flashback sequences that are made to seem important when all they really do is reiterate what we already know even before we're supposed to know it.

For as much as this sounds like complaining, it's actually a level of frustration, because there is still a lot to like about Oblivion, a film I wholly recommend seeing on the biggest screen possible with the most impressive sound system you can find.

When it comes to performances, however, if the goal was to have me despise Melissa Leo as the monotone Sally then job well done. Olga Kurylenko, Morgan Freeman and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau add very little to the end product while Riseborough is likely to enjoy most of the kudos as she is asked to deliver more than any other character in the film on an emotional level. In fact, her character is sadly under-explored and could have almost been at the heart of the story much more than Cruise's Jack.

Oblivion is a visual treat for audiences feeling the need for something "big", but for the audiences hoping it's a sci-fi film for the ages they'll be disappointed. While you'll find traces of many science fiction classics in the running time of Oblivion the story just doesn't amount to the ambition of its visuals and the twists and turns in the narrative may be more likely to result in laughter from some audience members rather than the awe Kosinski certainly would prefer.

Overall Grade: C-