FILM REVIEW: OBLIVION

OBLIVION (12A)
Starring: Tom Cruise, Andrea Riseborough, Olga Kurylenko, Morgan Freeman, Melissa Leo
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Running time: 126 minutes
Released by: Universal Pictures
Out: Now

Jack (Cruise) and Julia (Riseborough) are apparently the last two humans left alive on the surface of Planet Earth. Mankind won a war with an alien race, but the cost was a heavily irradiated planet unsuitable for long-term life. They are coming to the end of their allotted mission of maintaining the flying drones and power stations that are set to keep the ragtag survivors of the invasion at bay. In two short weeks, Jack and Julia will be winging their way off to Titan to join the rest of humanity.

Julia is more eager than Jack. The former is a by-the-book operator anxious to leave and despairing at the more impulsive Jack who plays looser with the rules and takes more chances. Jack also asks more questions and can’t deny an innate yearning within him to stay on his home planet, whatever its condition. He’s also having recurring visions of himself and another woman (not Julia) on top of a pre-apocalyptic Empire State Building. He doesn’t know who it is – the mission requires a full memory-wipe so that both operatives are committed to the larger mission – but she haunts his sleeping moments.

But these final days will not go well. First Jack witnesses a space-pod crashing to Earth on the edge of the radiation-zone. The pod contains several members of what appears to be a sixty-year-old NAS space-mission, but the drones destroy all but one pod before Jack can stop them. Inside the last pod… the woman of his dreams and one who has a very interesting story to tell. A story that will have Jack questioning the role of his superiors in his current predicament…

And that's not even mentioning the fact that Jack and Julia may not be the last humans at all... a group of people claiming to be survivors of the holocaust emerge like morlocks from the buried city, led by a steam-punk'd Morgan Freeman and a story of his own.  Now Jack's in real trouble...

If imitation is the most sincere form of flattery than there can be little doubt that Oblivion could win an Olympic Gold outright.  Despite what is an undeniably amazing result of a visual-effects department at the top of their game - creating an antiseptic haven and bleak future world below that feel fully realised at every turn - it is also hard to imagine a film that so shamelessly brings out a back-catalogue of science-fiction milestones and proceeds to joyfully  borrow, plunder, steal or homage (your mileage may vary) them at pace.

Like a deft piece of smooth corporate espionage, this is a movie that feels simultaneously like a wonderful shiny toy but somehow without the joy of the original treasure itself. It might well be a tribute to the likes of Tom Cruise, Andrea Riseborough , Olga Kurylenko  and supporting turns from Morgan Freeman and Melissa Leo that for the most part, the audience is along for the ride, dazzled by the tone and texture of the piece and ignoring that growing voice in the back of the collective head that says “Didn’t they do this in Independence Day?’, ‘I liked the ORIGINAL Total Recall, but..?’,  ‘Doesn’t this feel a little like Planet of the Apes’ and ‘A sunglass-wearing Cruise in an aircraft AND on a bike… should I start humming ‘Highway to the Danger Zone’ now or later?”.

And that’s just a few of the many, MANY obvious touchstones…

It’s also always a warning sign when a film feels it needs to start with a good ten minute monologue of its back-story to bring the audience up to speed on its setting - something that could well have been avoided with a tweak to the story structure and the fact that much of that history is addressed again  later in the picture. Equally the memory-wipe element is something of an absurd plot-device that serves no logical purpose except to muddy the waters and confuse the participants.

Ultimately a glossy and well-visualised outing - with A-List actors bringing a satisfactory  level of action - Oblivion is perfectly passable, but highly-derivative cinema that will have you joining Cruise in a sense of deja-vu long before the credits roll.  The actual journey, though, is executed well enough to retread such familiar elements once… but won’t stand up to repeat viewing thereafter.

3/5