'Turn Loose the Drones'('Top Gun' ft. the Tribe of the Future)

Rating: 7/10 (21 June 2013)

I have reviewed this on my _blog—but regardless. There a few exciting moments—Harper's descent in the building (it looked like a church, probably)—in search of the disappeared drone, most of the 'Top Gun' reboots, etc.. Execrably written, OK, maybe that is an overstatement, but within a mediocre script, with modest intellectual means, a comics—level script,
There are some flight scenes, generally well done—both Cruise's jet and the drones look good, and perhaps we are spared the comic relief—except in a few drone gags; the overall design really looks good, in a 'SG Atlantis' way, like an ambitious TV show. Cruise is very handsome, and the one actor of his generation who made it to keep a high—level career (only Willis comes close, and Gibson—but not Costner, Rourke, countless others ), but handles badly a clichéd script—and overacts whenever it's possible—fighting with his teammate or as a Walden of the future.
The production values are often outstanding. The handful of actors play sometimes annoyingly bad, save for the mentioned Freeman, who takes the chance of some restrained, a bit weary flamboyance, if you take this oxymoron. The score didn't seem remarkable.
And you know something, M. Freeman still kicks ass, as hard as ever; I gave a thought to the fact that he played with many leading men from the '80s wave—Rourke, Costner, etc..
There are, at the beginning, impressive panoramas of a deserted world, scarred by nuclear craters and fallen prey to the radioactive storms, vistas of a pained world, the Earth burnt by catastrophes; and I found appealing the images of breathtaking falls through lightning and celestial fire.
But 'Oblivion' begins as a movie with aliens, alien invaders, and we know beforehand we are going to see Freeman, which suggests a mystery to come, and we already know the title, and are intrigued about that too .
The idea would be that the Tetans don't really control the human clones—therefore, they need to lie to them; the Tetans have won the war, but they need to use human clones in order to—what? They, the clones, are without memory, but not brainwashed.
We find nothing about why the Tetans did that, why do they need to use such a device—the army of Harpers, etc.—but then, we are not really curious to find out more, either.
But I liked the sense of T. Cruise recovering the zest of his 'Top Gun' days, and of being seemingly ageless. More body combats, and generally physical scenes, like the one in the presumed church, or Tom C. kicking himself, in the desert, would of been endearing.
The script doesn't make much sense, and the overall meaning remains quite vague. It's not that the execution fails; the ideas themselves are rubbish.