Overcasted, Underfed, Average

Rating: 5/10 (19 September 2013)

Tom Cruise is a mercurial actor when you dig into his body of work, and his role in Oblivion almost seems custom-built for somebody else. The story itself is incredibly thin, but all the pieces fall together in proper sequence, and in the end, you're not left surprised so much as satisfied that things play out the way they do.
For much of the early portion of the film, the overall mystery factor leaves you curious, but once they strip this away, the film does a poor job of evaluating the antagonist and its motives. Much like Cruise's role, that of Morgan Freeman could have been filled by a much lesser actor with similar results; there is simply not enough room for him to deftly navigate the film in the manner he is capable. Minor parts aside, the casting is not so much a flaw for Oblivion as it is a point of confusion; such big names need not have applied.
The plot itself, as I mentioned, is thin on detail and heavy on putting things in their right place. Sci-fi goes in either one direction or the other most of the time, and as a huge fan of the genre in a film sense, Oblivion doesn't have the balance between style, substance and storytelling to truly grip me. The big revealing moments are not so much expected as they are dry, leaving a taste in mouth that is familiar, but one which you cannot quite place where you've experienced it before. A strange sort of deja vu.
A few minor tweaks, and a story that didn't pat itself on the back for being sequenced properly and went further into the details of the intriguing world it only dabbles in, could have made Oblivion much more than what it is; an average film, overcasted and underfed.