OBLIVION (M) (124 min)
Directed by Joseph Kosinski. Starring Tom Cruise, Andrea Riseborough, Morgan Freeman.
Earth 60 or so years in the future. It is a radioactive wasteland. Aliens invaded, and although we eventually saw them off, humans had to – as the soldiers once said about a Vietnamese village – destroy the place to save it.
The surviving humans are en route to Saturn’s moon Titan, where they will establish a new home planet. Back here, a few technicians and their helpful killer drones stand guard over gigantic machines that are busily converting Earth’s oceans into an energy source to power the new civilization on Titan. The only menace left on Earth is a scattered remnant horde of surviving alien invaders, derisively referred to by the humans as ‘scavs’.
That’s the set up, and if you think it sounds like a load of old rubbish, you’d be right. We’re not far at all into Oblivion before anyone who’s seen a bit of sci-fi over the years will realize that the story doesn’t add up. And we all know that in the movies, when a story doesn’t add up, it’s a sure sign there is a Vast Global Conspiracy lurking just around the next plot twist. So, without giving anything too much away, let me tell you that Oblivion contains an almighty switcheroo, and that the film stops being a vaguely dispiriting and unoriginal chore to sit through, and quite suddenly becomes a fairly engrossing and resolutely entertaining Good Time.
I’ve become quite the Tom Cruise fan in the past couple of years. The wee fella seems to have left his couch-vaulting days behind him, and has been making some very smart and self-aware movie choices. In Oblivion he takes an underwritten and quite lifeless character by the scruff of the neck, and makes him watchable by sheer force of will.
