some good, some bad

Rating: 6/10 (13 May 2013)

"Oblivion" is one of those movies thats hard to review without writing a spoiler. I'll have to be careful...
OK, lots of people have written reviews here complaining about how this movie is a rip off of so many other Sci-Fi movies like 2001: a Space Odyssey, Tron, The Matrix, Blade Runner, Wall-E, Independence Day, etc. So maybe thats the bad news. But the good news is that all of those movies were good movies, so at least here you can count on Oblivion NOT being trashy like the Alien series, etc. I mean thankfully, we have Tom Cruise, and playing a role too in which he must confront and understand his own existence almost like Bruce Willis had to do in "The Sixth Sense". So you will be forced to think a little bit, but it shouldn't take Sci-Fi veterans that long to get the catch. We've been down this road too many times now.
Anyway, Tom plays Jack Harper, a technician entrusted with maintaining power generating equipment and drones on a post apocalyptic earth. Who he actually works for is for you to figure out. Who Jack Harper really is is also for you to figure out, as well as for Jack, who is not really all there mentally. Now, IF Jack can remember whats been wiped from his memory, and many are counting on him being able to do that, he may be able to save earth from the aliens that wrestled control of it from humanity. There is still time, but only if a secret plot intended to bring him to his senses works. Thats the story, anyway.
OK, but is this enough to carry the film? Its a very lonely place where Jack works unfortunately, and we must first suffer through a pretty dull opening 45 minutes before anything really interesting happens. Here he is paired up with a beautiful assistant (Andrea Riseborough) but with virtually NO other support structure which is bizarre. So of course they make love. There seems little else to do and no one is watching anyway. But I found all of this boring and tedious. Meanwhile Jack stalks the planet like a Swat team member. Looking for what? Scavs? What are they doing there?
Slowly, a plot does begin to unfold, though, and soon nothing is as you thought it was in the beginning. Meanwhile, we've got some nice but not earth shattering cinematography to enjoy, an atrocious music score to listen to, and not a whole lot in the way of dialogue from anybody thats not military-talk. Yawn........Oh, and there are these drones with those blinking red eye-lights.
Eventually though, the minimalistic plot a la 2001: a Space Odyssey turns existential when a spaceship with mysterious cargo crashes and we get to scratch our heads a lot. Meanwhile, I like the flashbacks to NY and the "oasis" which was green, but inexplicably so given the seeming absence of any other life on the planet. I kinda don't have a clue as to how the shack and all that memorabilia got there, so it was almost like a dream. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn't real at all, but a state of mind, like an eden. Jack visits the shack early on like a man returning to his childhood. Without his memories, though, what draws him there? Some strange attraction he will eventually come to understand, I guess, and a garden of eden and rebirth it will prove to be ultimately.
So, but thats about all I can reveal though, and you will have to see the movie to find out what really happens. I can tell you though that Jack does fall in love, or re-falls in love, which reacquaints him with his human side. Its a love kind of like in "Avatar" - a dual "love of woman/love of nature" kind of love. And of course, from there, just like in Avatar, we go right to the battle which climaxes the movie.
So yeah, its a rehash - I admit it. Avatar mixed with 2001: A Space Odyssey mixed with Independence Day mixed with Wall-E, etc. I'm glad that we never got to meet any real aliens though, which turned out to be one of the interesting little twists in the story. But overall, all of that thought provoking mystery surrounding Jack and his love and his past doesn't quite make up for the fact that so much of this movie is predictable visually, musically, and technologically. Morgan Freeman gives us his usual nice performance, but otherwise, we don't get much insight into the folks that he leads. Their plight? Their pain? Not really revealed, unfortunately. And lastly, ANY movie who's main character's name is "Jack" is going to dredge up memories of Titanic for me and WILL YOU PLEASE STOP REPEATING THAT NAME and calling it out over and over again!
JACK!........JACK!........Call him Clarence and maybe you won't feel so compelled to cry out.
Thank you....