But “Oblivion,” thankfully, is not Cruise digging through the dregs; this shouldn’t land on the lower-level tiers of his career—it should be closer to the “Mission: Impossible” franchise than to “Knight and Day.” And that’s not only because Cruise is, well, committed and charming and solid in it, but also because the vision of director Joseph Kosinski, who co-wrote the film by adapting his own same-named graphic novel, is so clear and realized. (Kosinski previously directed “TRON: Legacy,” which was similarly beautiful.) That intensity of vision gives “Oblivion” a continued sense of forward motion, a sense that it’s all building toward something really climactic and really revelatory and really good. And it is—mostly.
“Oblivion” puts audiences in 2077 on Earth, which has mostly been destroyed thanks to an alien invasion; the Scavengers, or Scavs, took out the moon but weren’t fully successful in exterminating us. The vast majority of humans live on Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, except for those who work on a project to save the last of the planet’s natural resources—including Jack (Cruise, of “Top Gun 3D,” “Jack Reacher,” “Rock of Ages,” “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol,” and “Knight and Day”), who performs drone maintenance. His memory of his former life wiped away by his bosses, including his supervisor Sally (Melissa Leo, of “Flight” and “The Fighter”), he spends every day exploring Earth, trying to look for pockets of natural beauty in an otherwise dying world, and spends every night with his lover and coworker Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) in a huge tower thousands of miles above Earth.
Only two more weeks remain before Jack and Victoria are scheduled to join the rest of the humans on Titan, so, of course, something goes wrong—a spaceship crashes on Earth that has humans on it, asleep in coffin-like capsules; one of them, a woman named Julia (Olga Kurylenko, of “Seven Pyschopaths,” “There Be Dragons,” and “Quantum of Solace”), recognizes Jack. And, shockingly, Jack realizes he recognizes her, too—that there is some part of his brain resisting the present and the now of his life. That sense of disconnect, of psychological estrangement, is furthered when Jack meets mysterious rebel leader Malcolm (Morgan Freeman, of “The Dark Knight Rises,” “Dolphin Tale,” “Conan the Barbarian,” and “The Dark Knight”), who encourages him to question Sally’s version of the truth. And that’s when everything goes wrong, and when the film’s stakes really kick into high gear.
“Oblivion” is, quite obviously, striking—a little like “The Host,” which also had an alien-invasion storyline, this film’s color palette is stark white versus earthy tones, so our planet comes off look alive and dirty and breathing, while the high-tech future is sterile and cold and unfeeling. It’s a familiar, but welcome, contrast that helps definitively ground “Oblivion” into the sci-fi genre. And as the film’s narrative gets twistier and turnier, you’ll appreciate those cinematographic touches, the way Malcolm’s followers are grungy and “Mad Max”-like and the humans in charge are pristine and aloof. Those characterizations and presentations are all updated nods to sci-fi binaries we already know, so there’s a good sense of contextualization here, of understanding how the film’s story needs to be supported by its visuals. Few films really succeed at that kind of balance.
Then there are Cruise, who is still quite good at this action stardom thing, with his steely gaze and his perfect running form, and Leo, who is steely and intimidating and delightful, the exact right kind of person to grapple with our hero. The two actors work well together, even though their characters want to tear each other apart. And, selfishly, I enjoyed the fact that “Oblivion” has three major female characters—even though two of them effectively serve as Cruise’s love interests, such gender inclusiveness isn’t always present in sci-fi.
But visuals and casting aren’t the only things that carry a film, and because of what they can’t do, “Oblivion” isn’t perfect. The plot get convoluted toward the end, and ultimately this idea—of evil aliens and evil bureaucracies and evil, evil things trying to take advantage of us poor humans—isn’t particularly novel. Plus, one of the film’s greatest problems is Cruise’s narration, which too often tells us what Jack is feeling in addition to showing us: he’s gazing off into the distance, and then he tells us he’s sad; he seems particularly ecstatic around a particular love interest, and then he tells us he loves them. It’s that kind of overkill that keeps “Oblivion” from true transcendence: its reliance on repeating genre tropes instead of creating new ones. As a trailblazer, “Oblivion” falls a bit flat—but as a thoroughly thought-out, meticulously crafted sci-fi product, the film is exemplary.
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