Oblivion-Review

60 years into the future, the Earth has been ravaged by an alien invasion, which makes most of its surface uninhabitable. Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) is one of the few drone repairmen stationed on Earth, ready to evacuate the planet for the moon of Titan and leave his home world to the alien threat known as the Scavs. Plot twists abound when Hooper rescues Julia(Olga Kurylenko),  a woman from his amnesia-induced past.

If you`re in the market for intergalactic eye-candy, Oblivion is unlikely to disappoint. The visuals on this number range from the pristine to the perfect, with director Joseph Kosinski showcasing a rich, alternate reality, with echoes of our own, ranging from a desolate Empire State Building to an abandoned football stadium. It`s undeniably breathtaking at first, but Kosinki`s obsession with bombarding us with panorama after panorama of beautifully ravaged landscape means that the story meanders along, without the necessary human drama or character drama to get us truly invested.

There`s an obligatory love triangle between Hooper, Julia and Comms Officer Sally (Melissa Leo), but that aspect of the movie is woefully underbaked. It doesn`t help that Cruise`s Jack Harper seems like a pastiche of The Matrix`s Neo and his trademark lone wolf act from Top Gun.The plot twists regarding Jack`s past are marginally better developed, although they`re mostly derivative of movies like The Matrix, Blade Runner and Moon.

Classical Studies geeks (this reviewer included) will find the movie`s Horatius reference gratifying; one poetic quote does not however, a stellar sci-fi movie maketh. Sticklers for coherence will find the way Oblivion plays fast and loose with its own laws of gravity vaguely annoying. A well-crafted science fiction movie- with its liberal undermining of reality- need to adhere to the rules of the world it creates more rigorously than films of other genres, and Oblivion is peppered with both logical irregularities and convenient oversights. We`ll leave you to pick `em out for yourself, but you`d probably have a better time if you sat back and enjoyed Oblivion without observing its mechanics too closely.

On the bright side, the latter half of the movie features some interestingly shot action and a less sedate pace, with a particularly entertaining dog-fighting sequence, featuring some feisty drones and Tom Hooper`s aircraft. Without giving away too much, Oblivion`s conclusive showdown between Tom Hooper and a malignant artificial intelligence manages to tie together all its earlier implications neatly enough, although it feels inevitable rather than truly satisfying. Hey, they even managed to sneak in a stereotypical Hollywood ending, for all that`s worth.

Ultimately, science fiction`s raison d`Ã