Oblivion Review

10th Apr 2013

Tom Cruise is Jack Harper, a drone technician who spends his days patching up machines on an abandoned planet that’s been ravaged by aliens and nuclear weapons. At night, Jack is haunted by memories of a mysterious woman in a city that he knows hasn’t existed for decades. Then, on a routine patrol, he comes across an escape pod with a sole human survivor – the woman in his dreams.

There are huge visuals winks and nods to Matrix, Krull, Minority Report, Dune, Star Wars and even Top Gun. It feels like hundred sci-fi films all rolled into one, which isn’t a bad thing, but it never feels original, just a really good mash up.

The score was bombastic with a strong sense of the 80’s, which reminded me of Drive and what Cliff Martinez did. This doesn’t quite reach that perfect symmetry between what’s on the screen and what you’re hearing; I almost felt like the music was OTT and trying to engineer an emotion that wasn’t on screen.

Tom Cruise is fantastic – I think I should caveat this whole paragraph by saying that I’m a huge fan of both Tom Cruise and his trademark perfect run. While I think he’s lumbered with a hammy and clichéd script, he does a good job playing someone who can be both worker bee and hero. Andrea Riseborough is fantastic, but I never quite believed in the relationship between Tom Cruise and Olga Kurylenko’s character – there was no ‘you had me at hello’ moment.

Visually, it’s full of gorgeous detailing which really propels you into a believable future landscape. Everything, down to the detailing of the costumes, the drones, the spaceships, the ravaged cityscapes all build up a convincing portrayal of this terrible new world. It’s no surprise that it began life as a graphic novel and that its Director, Joseph Kosinski, helmed TRON: Legacy, another film that I enjoyed visually, but never quite pulled all of its elements together.

It’s a film full of fun set pieces and I can see that it’s trying to reach some emotional, poignant moment, but it’s hampered by dialogue and a conclusion that is somehow very predictable. I just felt that it was over-reaching. There’s something not bringing all the elements together and I can’t quite put my finger on why that was. Simply put, it was certainly entertaining, though never moving. I have to say though, that given Prometheus’ tragic performance last year, this is certainly better handled and is altogether more satisfyingly if a little mundane. For that reason, a generous rating to encourage you all to see it at the cinema, where it’s in its element.