Joseph Kosinski's "Oblivion" certainly isn't without ambition and visual imagination - two elements that are often the building blocks of great sci-fi. But even with Kosinski's fairly remarkable recreation of a post-apocalyptic Earth, "Oblivion" is also an overblown mess, a bipolar melodrama that borrows from so many of its predecessors that it's hard to even keep them all straight.
Despite a few truly harrowing moments early on and a believable performance from Tom Cruise, what we have is a movie sunk by unnecessary plot twists, some of the lamest bad guys in history, and a few laughable scenes that the movie is just never able to recover from. Jack (Tom Cruise) has a fairly unusual job at the beginning of "Oblivion." In a scorched Earth that has been devoured by war and taken over by "scavengers," he works for the few remaining humans, who have mostly scattered to the moons of Saturn. The rest, we're told, are hovering in an enormous space station that oversees Jack's job and prepares for the full transition to the outer part of the solar system. Also with him on his lonely mission is Victoria (Andrea Riseborough), a beautiful project manager who gets to sit in the comfort of the office while Jack tools around with all the dangerous stuff down below.
In their station high above the clouds, we get a sense of the lost beauty of Earth, and the early scenes between Victoria and Jack give us the feeling that something is just off despite the visual extravagance we're showered with. With an Earth now covered with radiation and dangerous scavengers that want to kill him, Jack and Victoria do a completely thankless job. In a fairly hokey scene near the beginning, Cruise tries to lift his spirits by recanting a Super Bowl from long ago, though he's left to fill in the details for himself and we get a sense that the psychological isolation is starting to take its toll. For someone smart and well-trained, Jack also has a funny way of falling very easily into the scavengers' traps. While this provides a few cheap thrills for the audience, it doesn't do much in suggesting that Jack is the right person for the job. Thanks to the various twists and turns, "Oblivion" is also one of those movies nearly impossible to discuss without giving at least something away. Anyone who saw a preview before heading into the theater will know that Morgan Freeman is involved in some shape or form, and "Oblivion" does have some fun making him the charismatic leader of a small group of humans left on Earth.
As Beech, Freeman seems to be more like he's at playtime than someone responsible for the entire human race, but the movie is actually better for his levity. As the wise elder statesman, Beech gently prods Jack into figuring out a bit more about his world, calling on him to question the truths he has accepted as fact. Freeman does his best to suggest he's the great man that writer/director Kosinski wants him to be, though his character is so limited it ends up being little more than a bloated cameo. But one of the biggest problems "Oblivion" has is with its killer drones. At first, they're nothing short of loud and terrifying, giving us a few tense early scenes that provide a frightening look into Jack's everyday life. When it gets down to the heavy shootouts, though, "Oblivion" loses its credibility as we see that the drones are little more than dimwitted terminators that can fly. For all the pomp and circumstance, they end up being not much more deadly than firecrackers, which might startle the easily perturbed but aren't much of an actual threat.
This is a movie where good guys are constantly down to their last breath, only to have someone else come out of absolutely nowhere to save the day. Once or maybe twice can be swallowed, but making that a habit is a good way to cheapen the drama. Despite its limitations, though, some sci-fi lovers will still enjoy picking out the revolving door of sci-fi influences, from Kubrick's "2001" and "Star Wars" to "Alien" and even Andrey Tarkovsky's mind-bending "Solaris." The problem is that "Oblivion" is so busy reworking themes and visual clues from other sci-fi films that it scarcely ever strikes out on its own.
Considering that "Oblivion" started with a grandeur that hinted at great things to come, it's difficult to stomach a plot that devolves into shootouts with flying mechanical balls. Director Kosinski shows that he has some visual flair and loves the sci-fi films of yesterday, but "Oblivion" turns out to be a forgettable sci-fi adventure that never makes good on its promises.
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