Oblivion (2013)

Jack: "We won the war, but lost the planet."

By Joseph Kosinski
With Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman and Melissa Leo

Oblivion is one of these movies that come out and are hard to ignore. Whether it's the cast, the budget or the advertisements, you are likely to hear about it. Despite the fact that I found TRON: Legacy (2010) (also by Kosinski) very boring, I have to say, much like Oblivion, it was visually beautiful.

The movie starts in 2077, where the protagonist Jack Harper gives us a brief reasoning behind the current state of the earth then. A doomed humanity nuked the earth in an attempt to stop a breed of alien that not only destroyed the moon but is still hiding and scavenging materials on earth. Mankind has since moved to Titan, a satellite of Saturn. Jack and his partner Victoria are on patrol on earth before they can ship off to Titan. Jack flies over the remnants of the USA in order to repair the drones that prevent the scavengers from stealing. Jack, despite a memory wipe, is disturbed by a recurring dream where he sees himself with another woman; growing increasingly curious on the materials he finds during his tour, Jack begins questioning.

The movie doesn't invent much, as most concepts have been explored in a plethora of sci-fi, and dystopian movies before, despite all this, the story is quite nice and even though it drags out a little, it remains entertaining. The visual cleanness of TRON: Legacy is here enhanced by the outdoors shots. I do not enjoy this glass clean, high tech look that much as I feel it is almost too perfect and lacks the rawness and cluttered, industrial appearance of survival in a dystopian world. However, the scavengers represent that aspect and I was most pleased with them.

Morgan Freeman is amazing as usual and I really enjoyed Melissa Leo's representation of Sally, mostly through voice work. Tom Cruise doesn't really impress but if you don't like him, at least you get to see him fight off himself.

I mentioned that a lot of concepts have been explored already but I guess one would probably see resemblances with War of the Worlds (2005) or its original version The War of the Worlds (1953) but as I haven't seen them, I was mostly reminded of the machines in the video game Half-Life 2 (2004). Other aspects would call to mind The Book of Eli (2010), Moon (2009), Sphere (1998) or even classics such as Total Recall (1990) and (The) Terminator series as well as the Mad Max series.

With that being said, amidst its general mix of influences it knots a story that is somewhat touching. Nevertheless, it's a little predictable, full of action movies clichés, and somewhat short on meaningful secondary characters. It holds its fair share of annoyances.

I liked: The scavengers. Stunning visuals.

I disliked: Longish. Not particularly original. Americano-american references only.

61/100
A movie to see for its eyefuls of clear-cut glass decors and beautiful landscape, more than its environmental depth.