An entertaining and thought-provoking sci-fi drama, mis-marketed as an action movie.

Rating: 7/10 (6 September 2013)

I truly enjoyed Oblivion. It's one of those increasingly rare sci-fi movies that takes the more courageous visual route of being "clean and polished" instead of the boring trend of gritty, blue-filtered futurescapes. It's post apocalyptic but it's gorgeous, the downed landmarks of the western world look like tourist attractions in the morning sunlight, the technologies and habitats look sparkling and well maintained. It's a very bright and airy movie visually and the cinematography is stunning throughout.
It's not only courageous in it's visual style either. The story is balls to the wall sci-fi, unhampered by human antagonists. We're talking alien minds, memory wipes, laser guns and combat drones. I won't go so far as to call the story original - in fact it seems quite derivative of several popular sci-fi films. There are shades of The Matrix Revolutions, Moon, Total Recall, The Island, Logans Run and others. But instead of throwing these homages together into a mashup that just makes you want to watch the original films instead, it blends them seamlessly and emerges as a solid and entertaining movie in its own right.
It's not perfect though. I have three gripes with it. First and foremost is that it was horribly mismarketed as a sci-fi actioner and it isn't. There are a couple of decent (but not outstanding) action set pieces but the majority of Oblivion is a moment-of-awakening drama and a love story, with thematic elements of what it means to be mortal and to die well running through it. Its going to disappoint the hell out of kids who go in looking for big bangs. This is much closer to 'Moon' in pace than something like 'Star Trek Into Darkness'.
My second gripe is that, as thought-provoking as it was, I can't help but think there are some hefty plot holes in there. I would have to watch it a few times over to pull them out clearly but my gut instinct tells me they are there. Most of them are explicable if you extrapolate far enough with your own imagination, but it would have been a stronger film if the concepts, plot elements and character motivations were more watertight.
Third gripe is a minor one, but significant enough for me - Morgan Freeman was massively underused. His character is a cardboard cutout cliché of a rebel leader and could have been so much more interesting and complex.
The gripes aren't enough to bring a good movie down though, and Oblivion is a really good movie. A grown up, engaging, speculative tale that's stunning to look at. It will take a place on my sci-fi DVD shelf.