Cruise Tries but Very Predictable

Rating: 3/10 (25 April 2013)

Tom Cruise gives it everything, but ultimately cannot make too much of a storyline/writer/director, who is more interested in big sets and oh so clichéd familiar plot, that he has to put big messages out there so the thickest member of the audience can follow a not very complex story. So what is the story? Post-apocalypse Earth, devastated by inter-stellar war, has been abandoned, leaving the odd drone repairman and sidekick to keep huge fusion from water collectors harvesting the last of Earth's resources to be sent after the population who have decamped to Titan (cue reference to '2001' - and they keep coming! Unfortunately Tom's drone repairman character (not to be confused with Wall-E), Jack Harper, suffers from that Hollywood complaint - dreams and memories (despite a memory wipe!)cue 'Total Recall.' The dream involves a sexy young Olga Kuralyenko - so Jack's sidekick, the more robotic Andrea Riseborough, despite kit off antics and lovemaking in the pool in the skies, is on a hiding to nothing! The plot hinges on mysterious creatures called Scavs (the losers in the war) trying to lure Jack down into the depths (cue 'The Time Machine' Morlocks) and attracting a passing space ship with a signal from the shattered Empire State building! Cue all sorts of 'Planet of the Apes' tropes and 'Day After Tomorrow' visuals, where lo and behold out pops Tom's dreamgirl, who refuses to explain herself in case she gives away the plot half an hour too soon! I'll say no more about the plot, except to say I decided to go to the loo in a quiet moment - the sign of a mediocre movie- and came back to find Tom Cruise having a fist fight with Tom Cruise! Um. the obvious reason for knowing that not everything is right with this world from the word 'go' is that after a so-called nuclear war New York is not polluted with radiation, to be followed by the library episode (cue 'Day After Tomorrow') still having dry books after floods and earthquakes - there is also a pinch from 'Zardoz' with a book left for the droneman to read!!!!!!!!!!! I could go on.... So very spectacular, somewhat interesting, but poorly paced, badly written, over designed, derivative, plot holes, and can we please not have such prolonged over-emotional endings/fadeouts (cue the rubbishy ending of 'Skyfall')? Some good acting just about keeps it going.