Love in the Time of Massive Radiation

Rating: 7/10 (12 April 2013)

This is sweeping, serious sci-fi, concerning the last people on a future Earth, long since scoured by nuclear conflict. The enemy was/is a race called the Scavs. Tom Cruise plays Jack, who, along with his colleague Victoria (Andrea Riseborough), stalks the wasteland, fixing drones and maintaining the rigs that promise to one day make the planet habitable once more. Above them is the Tet, a vast spacestation that promises to take the couple to Titan, where the rest of humanity awaits.
Oblivion borrows from pretty much every sci-fi movie ever made, utopian and dystopian. Planet of the Apes. The Mad Max sequels. Late on, I glimpsed Independence Day, Sunshine and Battlestar Galactica in the space of ten minutes. Even Robocop is in there, with the drones barking like ED-209. A particular cynical viewer might suggest the film starts as Wall-E and turns into Moon. But it does have some of its own ideas, mostly with regard to the technology in which Jack and Victoria are immersed.
Apart from the tech design, there is plenty to admire about Oblivion. Its plot might be derivative, and ultimately wraps itself in rather a neat bow, but it's well laid out, revealing the right bits at the right times. The music, by Joseph Trapanese, along with Anthony Gonzalez from the band M83, is suitably epic and stirring, cut from the same sonic cloth as Trapanese's work on Tron Legacy. The two key performances are those of Cruise (always game, always watchable) and more notably Riseborough, who's allowed to be alluring for once. Olga Kurylenko, as Julia, is somewhat blank as the third part of the love triangle.
Tron Legacy was a poor movie because it had a poor script occupied by poor characters, and this is where Oblivion elevates itself above Joseph Kosinski's previous work. Here we have recognisable humans in the midst of drama. In particular, the fraught relationship between Jack and Victoria makes for some subtle, unspoken exchanges. The dinner between Jack, Victoria and Julia, is an expertly edited exercise in tension. And the scene where Victoria lures Jack into a transparent swimming pool is both seductive and sinister, like watching Michael Mann let loose on sci-fi.
Oblivion was filmed using super-HD "CineAlta" cameras, all the better to do justice to the luscious visuals. We've seen it all before but never this beautifully rendered. And behind the sheen is a human heartbeat, which shouldn't be ignored. Oblivion is a fine love letter to classic sci-fi.