Tom Cruise vs Giant White Balls

Rating: Null/10 (16 April 2013)

"In order to be effective, a doctrine must not be understood, but has to be believed in. We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand." - Eric Hoffer
The near future. In the aftermath of a violent war between aliens and humanity, Earth has been reduced to a radiation swathed wasteland. All surviving human beings now live on Tet, a mammoth spaceship which hangs in orbit. On the planet below, small clean-up teams prowl the landscape. They look for signs of vegetation, tend to giant planet-cleaning refineries and fend off terrorist attacks launched by the Scavengers, marauding bands of alien survivors.
Directed by Joseph Kosinski, "Oblivion" finds a pint-sized Tom Cruise playing Jack Harper, the leader of an Earth-based clean-up team. Harper flies about in a small aircraft, fights Scavengers, fixes broken machines and occasionally has dispassionate sex with Victoria, a desk bound woman to whom he's assigned. Harper's life is one of risk and routine.
In typical scifi fashion, however, Jack learns that he's living a very elaborate lie. Tet is not a human ship but an alien vessel, the Scavengers are not aliens but the last survivors of the human race, humanity didn't win the war but are fighting a last-ditch battle against their alien conquerers and Jack is not a human but a memory-wiped clone working for the enemy. Shocking? Predictable? Regardless, Tom Cruise's puny mind is swiftly blown. Ticked off, he straps a bomb to his ship, flies into the heart of the alien mother-ship, kicks alien butt and lives out the rest of his clone life in a lush forest with his photogenic wife.
"Oblivion's" a collage of other memorable science fiction films. Its climax is pure "Independence Day", Jack Harper's daily routines recall "Wall-E", "Fahrenheit 451", "Mad Max", "Moon" and "Silent Running" and the film borrows big from "2001: A Space Odyssey", "I Am Legend" (the novel), "Solaris" and Kosinski's own "Tron: Legacy".
Still, the film's conceptual design work is mostly excellent. Harper and his team live in sleek, modernist apartments, open plan, awash with expansive windows and affixed to tall, steel stilts. Harper's ship is also cool. It's a cross between a B-Wing fighter, an Ipod and a pair of testicles, though we don't quite believe it when this ship turns out to be space worthy (is this the first space ship in cinema history to have a propeller?). Some of the film's other designs are horrible, though, like a goofy motorcycle, silly globe-shaped "drones" and a ridiculous alien overlord who, being a giant red eye embedded within a black monolith, looks like a cross between HAL 9000 and a loudspeaker.
Whilst its first hour is strong, "Oblivion" quickly degenerates into a series of back and forth movements, Harper repeatedly landing and launching his spaceship and discovering things we the audience already suspect. Thankfully the film is aesthetically gorgeous. Kosinski's a professor of architecture, and so he photographs spaces/rooms/structures well. His lines are all clean, his camera work, shot flow, shot selection, framing and cutting hyper precise, his camera never shaking, every movement or composition super-planned and super-locked down. It's Hitchcock, Kubrick or Depalma level visuals.
Unlike "Tron: Legacy", which jettisoned as much dialogue as possible, "Oblivion" is very dialogue heavy. Like "Legacy", the film's best moments are wordless and simply marry strong visuals with music. Kosinski's at his best during these moments. You sense that his visual talents are undermined by the demands of popcorn cinema. Or maybe he really does have poor taste.
Like "Legacy", the film's score is a kind of post-postmodern version of 1980s, synth/electronic music. It seems to consist of appoggiaturas and simple, repeated 4, 3 or 2 beat rhythms, upon which other layers of sounds are progressively added. This results in a "wall of sound" (think Vangelis, Philip Glass, Korzeniowski etc) which builds slowly but dramatically to a prolonged climax (a type of "glue" score which is slowly becoming a cliché as the shape and structure of action movies change). Because of this "mounting" aesthetic, it is "Oblivion's" smaller moments which create a buzz.
Vague political subtext can be read into "Oblivion". Harper's a drone-like everyman who works hard during the day and returns home to a kind of consumerist paradise, complete with hollow luxuries, flat-screen everythings and a loveless relationship. He's a man of surfaces and inculcated superficiality. Like the recent James Cameron abomination, "Avatar", Harper's also indoctrinated into thinking that his life is grounded on sound, righteous values. He defines himself in relation to a Master which he believes stands for all that is good and all that is honourable, and of course believes that his own actions are resolutely humane. Harper, in other words, is your typical American, hard working, self-absorbed boyscout, doing what's right, saving the planet and fighting evil terrorists who live in caves. "Are you an effective team?" his alien overlord repeatedly asks.
The film's second half then reveals the reality behind the lie: Jack's complicit in evil, works for mineral guzzling warlords and is fighting an unjust war against those he's been conditioned to think are primitives. Unsurprisingly, Jack swiftly turns on his masters.
Beyond all this, the film has weak action sequences, cool flying sequences, some funny nods to Cruise's past movies (aviator sunglasses, baseball, motorcycles etc) and an unbelievable and overly elaborate alien plot (so much trouble for so little?). The film continues a growing "return to nature" trend/anxiety, and features Tom Cruise as an astronaut, which is hilarious for some reason, but also logical, considering the height limitations NASA places on spacemen.
7.9/10 – Worth two viewings.