"Oblivion" Review

You remember back in the day when action movies used to end with the apocalypse being heroically averted at the last second?

Nowadays, the end of the world has increasingly become the place to start for Hollywood sci-fi action adventures. Oblivion, the latest from director Joseph Kosinski (Tron: Legacy) is no exception in this respect.

Based on a yet-to-be-published graphic novella of Kosinski's creation, Oblivion tells the story of Jack Harper (Tom Cruise), a technician assigned to repair drones on an abandoned Earth. When Jack begins to recall precious memories that he was told were wiped away, he works to uncover the truth of his new world at all costs.
And his new world looks gorgeous. Shot by Academy-award-winning cinematographer Claudio Miranda (Life of Pi), the environment of Oblivion is wondrous to behold. From a decimated stadium that played host to the last ever Super Bowl to an Empire State Building with a spire now at ground level, everything looks real. And even the stuff that doesn't, like the drones or Jack's dragonfly-looking "bubbleship", isn't cartoony. Miranda's work and that of the visual effects artists lend a magnificent sweep and scope to Kosinski's vision that should be aesthetically pleasing to any viewer. Oblivion is the first movie of 2013 to make a strong bid for the next visual effects Oscar.

The same praise can't quite be given to the plot, however. If you took an ingredient from every sci-fi film of the last 50 years (everything from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien to Avatar and Prometheus, plus a surprisingly sizable dose of Wall-E), Oblivion would be what comes out of the melting pot.
The hero, Jack, is a technician that fixes drones on an abandoned planet. He also has a small plant that he takes care of. Sounds a heck of a lot like Wall-E, doesn't it? Jack even has two women in his life, either of which could easily be his EVE; a mysterious woman named Julia (Olga Kurylenko) and Jack's work companion Victoria (Andrea Riseborough). Jack and Victoria are, at one point, promised a new life in outer space where the rest of the humans have allegedly started to colonize. So in summary, Jack the drone-repair technician and the woman he lives with are promised a new life on a space station where other humans are supposedly living. Thank goodness Kosinski added some violence; otherwise Pixar might be after him for copyright infringement.
The action isn't anything to "E.T., phone home" about either. The gunplay and spaceship chases are fun while they last, but they're few and far between. So if you're expecting a non-stop barrage of intense sci-fi action, Oblivion is not your movie. That isn't to say it's a total snoozefest. In fact, Tom Cruise gives one of his best performances in years and effectively keeps the character drama engrossing. Andrea Riseborough adequately shoulders some of the weight too, and together I think she and Cruise prove to be "an effective team".

What really threw me for a loop was just about everything that happens after Jack meets with the rogue group of survivors led by Beech (Morgan Freeman). After Beech tasks Jack with fixing a captured drone so that he can send a bomb to the "Tet" (the ship where humans waiting to go to the outer space colony are allegedly living), Beech and his group essentially disappear. They aren't seen again until almost the end of the movie when Jack finally returns to help them with their task. Jack doesn't seem to mention them to anyone else, and his initial meeting with them seems to have less of an effect on his character than one would think. Additionally, Kosinski tries to take things to a preachy, philosophical level in the third act, which ends up undermining whatever riveting backstory and character drama he established in the previous hour and a half. Oblivion ends up trying to dig too deep for its own good. The ending is still reasonably satisfying, and I won't spoil anything, but the twists left me with a headache that I didn't expect.

In the end, Joseph Kosinski's Oblivion still looks great thanks to Kosinski's far-reaching vision and Claudio Miranda's Oscar-winning visual skills and gets an additional boost from solid acting performances and perfectly serviceable set pieces, but the overly philosophical third act muddies the plot in an unnecessary fashion, keeping Oblivion from fully reaching its lofty potential. It's serviceable, albeit unoriginal, sci-fi that should really be seen on the big screen to get the full effect of the environment Kosinski has envisioned, but it won't be the end of the world if you miss this one.

7/10