Oblivion

Oblivion is kind of like the Los Angeles Angels right now. All the talent and tools are in place, there is just a lack of execution. A team with Mike Trout, Josh Hamilton, Albert Pujols, Jered Weaver, C.J. Wilson, and Mike Scioscia managing should be dominating baseball. But despite the talent, the Angels are struggling. Same can be said for Oblivion. There are great actors involved; Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman, and Olga Kurylenko. The premise is intriguing, set in a futuristic earth that is beautifully rendered by impressive special effects. Yet Oblivion stumbles over itself one too many times, has a sloppy ending, and misses some great opportunities to be something more than just a middling science fiction film.

Jack (Tom Cruise, in his third role playing a guy named "Jack", and the second in a row) and Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) have been assigned to an outpost in 2077 earth to protect its final resources. Aliens attacked and the humans won the war, but earth was destroyed. The survivors now live in an off planet space station, and Jack and Victoria have to protect earth from its enemies that remain in combat. But Jack continues to dream of a mysterious woman (Olga Kurylenko), and doesn't quite accept the supposed truths of the world around him.

As I've written about before, Tom Cruise is one of my favorite actors that is in a ridiculous amount of good movies. He has a charisma and presence on screen that is matched by only a few. And Cruise is definitely on his game in Oblivion. Yet the script does not do him many favors, save for a monologue about a past Super Bowl that he's only read about, and he's not given much to do. Same for Morgan Freeman, who barely makes a cameo and doesn't say one thing of interest. The producers probably saw a free weekend in his schedule and decided to cast him so the poster would have more star power. Which I guess works, because the trailers and promotional material heavily promoted his involvement in the film.

The setting was visually captivating, especially the outpost where Victoria and Jack live. The futuristic motif is rendered in a way that consistently draws the viewer into a world of technology that everyone has imagined at some point. I'm always a sucker for sleek science fiction technology in movies, and Oblivion comes through in spades. It kind of reminds me of a live action version of Wall-E, another end of the world animated film. But where Wall-E used the theme to back an emotional story between Wall-E and Eve, the characters in Oblivion come off as flat. Cruise's character has some places to go that would have been intriguing, yet the writing is muddled and rushed so that his back story is not fleshed out properly. He and Kurylenko could have had a relationship that had some weight, but again the opportunity was missed.

Here's my recommendation for Oblivion: just see Moon instead. They're basically the same movie, but Moon was executed much better, and Sam Rockwell's one man show is much more lively than any of the characters in Oblivion. I had high hopes for this film, they just never were achieved. The special effects are striking, but what film doesn't have good special effects these days? That alone can't save Oblivion from crippling mediocrity.

2.5/5