Dull, meandering sci-fi dud

Rating: 4/10 (12 December 2013)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
Nearly a hundred years in to the future, Earth has been shattered by an invading army from the skies, and has become a desolate wasteland. In this barren landscape, Jack (Tom Cruise) is one of the few remaining 'drone' operators, who is dispatched from his remote station by his co- worker Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) to complete missions. But he is having recurring dreams about Earth and the life he once lived there, which he shares with a mysterious woman named Julia (Olga Kurylenko.) When he comes in to contact with this woman in real life, he is thrown in to a desperate identity crisis where he meets the leader of the invaders, Beech (Morgan Freeman) and the shocking truth of the matter.
Opening to decidedly average reviews, Oblivion was another one I forewent at the cinema, in spite of it probably being a film that would have been better suited there. Indeed, sweeping, majestic visuals and cinematography are probably it's main recommendations, for what is other-wise a slow, uninvolving and meandering trip in to nowhere, that fails to draw you in or go anywhere that your average post-apocalyptic action thriller already hasn't. With a plot that features only a few main characters, it really needed a story with some meat and bones on it to keep you interested, and sadly it just doesn't, boring and aimless as it is. It's such a shame so much effort went in to lavish production design and rollicking action sequences, and not as much as in to anything to subsidize it.
Cruise, it would seem, remains the go to guy for this kind of big budget, spectacular folly, and as long as it's got a star with his kind of name power on it, it's guaranteed to draw in at least some revenue at the box office. I don't know if it was a hit or a flop, but the reviews would seem to take the wind out of it's sails enough to hint at something probably roughly in between. It's the box office where you have to hit the makers of this kind of movie, because artistically it can take all the flak you can throw at it, but if enough fickle, superficial movie goers go and see it, an even lamer sequel will undoubtedly follow, and go some way to showing them they can get away with it.
In title and in deed, Oblivion is better suited as a theme park ride than a film. Maybe it would have been better if it was based on it. **