Tommy get your TOP GUN!!!

Rating: 5/10 (26 April 2013)

I will admit this is the first TOM CRUISE movie I have ever had the pleasure to lay my eyes upon, but it's not been from a lack of trying. In 1990 I purchased a secondhand VHS copy of a film called DAYS OF THUNDER, but unfortunately there was a film taped over it called COCKTAIL and I didn't stick around to watch the whole thing. I took the tape back to the flea market where I'd purchased it for $9, but the stupid stall was closed! I went back the next weekend and the owner's daughter told me that all sales were final and that I would have to keep the tape. I ended up opening my own stall at the Big Old County Flea Market and Swap Meet in June of 1992, and guess what the very first thing that I placed out for sale was? If you guessed that VHS copy of DAYS OF THUNDER/COCKTAIL then you win. It was also the first item I sold (for $4.50) at the booth, though if I'm remembering correctly it's also the only item i sold that summer back in 1992. Nobody wanted any of my other items, which were mostly old undershirts my recently passed father left behind. I also had about a dozen old (but still functioning) screwdrivers and two old (but not functioning) hammers. The tools had also belonged to my father, who died the previous winter of a cancer in his brain that had gone unnoticed until it was too late. He for some reason hadn't wanted to even try to fight it and in the end he just gave up.
OBLIVION left me speechless. The visual elements were by and far the most impressive I have ever seen in a TOM CRUISE movie, and the sound and music were top notch. I looked up the music players and it says the songs were made by a group called M80, just like the firecracker, which makes sense because the effects and sounds in this movie sometimes reminded me of watching a fireworks display. Not exactly like one, but it invoked the pleasant and slightly excited feeling one gets while sitting in the park on the 4th of July (or the 3rd or 5th of July, which I personally hate when it happens, but I guess because of permit restrictions or weather or what have you they sometimes just have to go ahead and do) waiting for the fireworks to begin, and the tingling you get on your neck and spine with the release of each firework. This movie (OBLIVION) also made me think of the end of the fireworks display when they shoot off all the rest of the fireworks at once and it's all a grand display with a wonderful payoff.
In the end, I will be recommending OBLIVION to most of my Algerian friends and all of the guys I know who grew up in Ethiopia. An old friend of mine once told me that if you have the knowledge and the inspiration, all that's left is to take action, and TOM CRUISE puts this saying to life with his performance in OBLIVION.