Review: Oblivion
Friday, April 19, 2013 at 6:31PM David here, with a review of this week's biggest super-massive release, Oblivion, while Nathaniel's off in Nashville.
"Seconds left on the clock. So Hubie throws a Hail Mary. Touchdown!" He may be seventy years in the future, and one of only two humans currently living on planet Earth (maybe), but Tom Cruise is still Just Like You. Cruise’s Jack just a regular Joe who likes baseball, Conway Twitty and younger women. Not only has he got one back at base – Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) is his partner on their mission monitoring the planet and repairing the drones roving the barren planet – but he’s got one in his head. Images of the world that was haunt him, as he dreams constantly about Julia (Olga Kurylenko) atop the Empire State Building. When the woman herself crash lands on the planet, impossibly replicated from his dreams, Jack’s uncomplicated life starts to disintegrate.
Oblivion’s title promises the vast grandeur of the most epic blockbusters – the mononymic title booms out of the dark to a blast of noise that’s somewhere between the Inception meme and the THX blast on the aggressive-noise scale. More...
For the remainder of the film, M83’s score is more melodic in its special accompaniment, saving the power for the superb title song as the credits roll. On a design level, Oblivion is impeccable, sleek, and streamlined – the perfect beast of a sci-fi blockbuster.
This also means that it is largely empty – Jack and Victoria’s home, elevated several hundred feet off the ground, is a modernist’s wet dream; a silver beetle shell with nothing inside that would disturb the passing clouds. It matches the endless empty deserts of the Earth below, apparently desolated by an alien invasion and resulting battle after which the remaining human population escaped to the Tet, a triangular spaceship floating in orbit. With recent efforts demonstrating man’s ability to destroy itself from within our society, Oblivion’s fear of the masked unknown offers an almost quaint escapism.
Tom Cruise’s tireless efforts to get as much mileage out of his stardom continue to impress. Oblivion requires much less acting and even less charisma from the actor than even a work-a-day actioner like Jack Reacher did – in this world, Cruise need only symbolise humans in a world devoid of them. Of course, he comes across Morgan Freeman wearing those goggles and cape (like all private denizens of the future), backed by a myriad of dark, watching figures - but they, too, merely symbolise one side of a moral opposition that Jack is dragged into.
The other side is played by Melissa Leo’s chirpy commander, glimpsed only on a suspiciously small video screen on Victoria’s command deck. Sally repeats the eerily placid question ‘Are you still an effective team?’ when Jack inevitably goes off-mission. Andrea Riseborough, continuing her unfortunate quest to elevate every average movie she can find, works magic with an underwritten character, injecting her smallest moments with a delicate poignancy, and creating a miniature tale of human tragedy where you sense the movie wasn’t particularly expecting one.
Oblivion is proficient rather than inventive – I could write a Tuesday Top Ten of the best movies that are echoed, aped or just plain ripped-off here. (A spaceship shootout in the canyons recalls the podracing scenes of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, but we can probably do better than that.) More disappointingly, it’s rarely bombastic – the final scenes settle for a melancholy inevitability rather than any daring surprises or exhilarating battles. In a way, it was a pleasant surprise to find a film of this ilk that was rather neatly explained, but, always wanting what I don’t get, I longed for more – the explanations weren’t big and messy enough, and therefore didn’t seem to justify that monolithic title and graceful blast of a theme song.
Grade: C
Oscar chances: Strictly technical. The visual effects are certainly impeccably done, but they’re mostly of the empty landscape variety, so I wouldn’t say it’s a sure thing.
Reader Comments (10)
Tom Cruise's next movie: All You Need is Kill, one of the stupidest names I've ever heard of for a movie.
Yeah, I'm pretty much in total agreement on this one.
I was meh on this too.
Someone had told me that the film was different from what they thought it would be from the trailer so when it came to that moment with the three of them around the table I got excited- I was interested in the relationship between them. How much did each know? What was the balance of power? I wanted to see that film! But it turned away from that quickly and it became kinda what I had been expecting before that someone had got my hopes up. And the constant reminders of better films did not help its cause. The big reveal was kind of a nothing. I wish it had asked more interesting questions.
It starts out great and then loses steam. Andrea Riseborough has a real spark. "Too long" was the most common comment walking out. I find Tammy fascinating, and this manages to elevate his vanity and oddity in very interesting ways. I give him credit for being a work horse, and promoting space travel, but this was very mechanical by the end.
I have to say, that scene where Victoria freaks out about the love triangle element is horrific, in a movie I otherwise think is largely so-so vs bad.
I have stopped to believe in movies with big budgets and big stars on their big posters with big guns and big plans to save/kill/fuck anything in sight. It is getting too obsolete. I will not go to a cinema to help producers help pay Cruise his XY millions.
I´m rather going to one of my top cinema festivals in Vancouver to see something really new, not just the same crap with the same guy in the front.
"...so, can someone tell me the name of the book that Jack picked up out of the rubble, and kept?"
Hated this. Even worse than offensive jingoistic nonsense like OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN. This hasn't an original thought in its tiny little brain.
Did anyone notice Julia's original pod number? 60 years before she was discovered by Jack, are pod number was 08. Somehow, in her sleep She moved to pod number 06.
Oblivion is where this dumb bland. unwatchable load of junk should be. Luckily for TC the young and clueless form the critical mass of the paying audiences. After 2 attempts to watch it at different times on t v when nothing else was on I had a choice, fall asleep after 15 minutes or insult my own intelligence and pretend he was Richard Burton and the script was believable.