Directed by: Joseph Kosinski
Starring: Tom Cruise, Olga Kurylenko, Morgan Freeman, Andrea Riseborough, Melissa Leo
I can imagine the pitch meeting for Oblivion. "It's Independence Day meets Total Recall." Oblivion is such a confusing mess that I was waiting for Morgan Freeman to show up just so he could explain everything to us as only he can. Guess what? He does, but he was no help either. Neither was Tom Cruise, who narrates the film as convincingly as possible, but soon there is the business of cloning and memory erasings injected and all hope for a decent sci-fi thriller is lost.
The biggest sin Oblivion commits is that it is a bore. We know there is more to the story than what Jack Harper (Cruise) tells us, but we're not awaiting the revelation with much eagerness. When the plot surprises are revealed, we aren't much surprised. It's as if the aliens (who after all perpetrated all of this) watched numerous sci-fi movies and stole all of their cliches to plot Earth's doom. Aliens travel thousands of light years to get here only to strip Earth of its resources and brainwash surviving Earthlings into helping them. If they were so smart, they would fix their issues at home so they wouldn't have to go so far out of their way to obtain precious resources.
The opening of the film fills us in on what happened up to that point. Years earlier, an invasion by "scavs" happened which resulted in the destruction of the moon and most of life on Earth obliterated. Jack Harper is a technician whose mission is to fix various machines down on Earth. The machines are used allegedly by surviving humans who are trying to soak up whatever resources are left so they could all ship out to Titan, one of Saturn's moons. Jack and his assistant/lover Viktoria (Riseborough) work for someone named Sally (Leo), who speaks in a Southern drawl and acts as tech support for Jack, I think. Jack and Viktoria have some pretty nice digs. They live in a glass house high above the clouds, complete with running water, pools, and all of the latest gadgets. If I were them, I'd rather live there than travel all the way to Saturn. Where does all that water come from anyway? Are there miles-long pipes that service the home?
Jack flies around in a small ship that looks a lot like a penis and testicles. Viktoria and Jack are supposed to be a team, but Jack does the lion's share of the work. Viktoria's job seems to be to report Jack's whereabouts to Sally and then say "Jack?" over the radio about 20 times per mission. She also hangs around the nice pad while Jack gets to fly around the rough terrain and avoid scav attacks, or what he thinks are scav attacks, by machines that look like flying R2D2s. Meanwhile, he is haunted by memories of a young woman he apparently knew in New York before the war, although he says this is impossible since he was born long after the war started and ended. Of course, Nothing Is At It Seems, so we know the entire plot will be revealed to us bit by agonizing bit. The mystery woman shows up on Earth in a pod that looks similar to Spock's coffin in Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan, revealing herself to be...
By now, the questions outnumber the answers in a lugubrious plot. If the aliens, or scavs, or whatever, can destroy the moon and build such technologically advanced equipment, then why do they need humans to do their dirty work? Why go through all the trouble of brainwashing and cloning? Why would the aliens allow Jack to bring back the pod to their home station? Can't the aliens make equipment that can't be disabled with bullets? I could go on, but why belabor the point? The actors try mightily, but I'm not entirely sure they can make sense of anything. The film works as inefficiently as the aliens do. It's long, tedious, and we reach the point of not caring long, long before it's finally over.
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