A visually gorgeous dystopian sci-fi think piece from Tron: Legacy director Joseph Kosinski, Oblivion is far more ruminative than the average action flick of its ilk, but it collapses under the weight of its own webby, familiar plotting, which is little more than an expensive grab-bag of genre tropes wrapped around a characteristically invested and empathetic performance from Tom Cruise. A boldly rendered film with faulty nuts, bolts and wiring is still, at its core, a movie that doesn’t work when it eventually comes time to pay off narrative set-up and beats.
Set on Earth in the year 2077, following a nuclear decimation that was part of a last-ditch effort to fend off an invading alien race that had already destroyed the moon, Oblivion centers around a restless drone mechanic, Jack Harper (Cruise), who lives thousands of feet up in the sky in a nice little Jetsons-type condo with his communications officer partner and lover, Victoria (Andrea Riseborough, quite good, if purposefully cool). They make “an effective team” the latter consistently assures Sally (Melissa Leo), from whom the pair receive daily directions and oversight via satellite, while Jack jets off to and fro, repairing the flying guardian weaponized robots that help keep the remaining alien “scavs” (or scavengers) away from the technology humans are using to harness energy from Earth’s remaining resources.
It’s just a couple weeks before Jack and Victoria are supposed to join the rest of what remains of humankind up in the monolithic “Tet,” after which point they’ll all repair to Titan, a moon of Saturn. Victoria is all ready for the reunion, but Jack is more restless. He’s plagued by dreams of Julia (Olga Kurylenko), a mysterious woman who may or may not be from his past, prior to his mandated five-year “memory wipe.” He also eventually crosses paths with Malcolm Beach (Morgan Freeman), who, you know, is also mysterious. It doesn’t give things away to say that along with the external threat, a confrontation with his own past ensues for Jack.
It’s far too early to consign Kosinski to the bin of Zack Snyder — that is to say, a visually gifted filmmaker who should be kept away from screenwriting software and simply steered to story ideas more fully developed by others. He obviously has a broad imagination, encompassing both physical worlds and bigger ideas. But Kosinski has a rather leaden, conventional touch with character and sets up his world — Karl Gajdusek and Michael DeBruyn take screenplay credit, but Oblivion is based on an unpublished graphic novel co-wrote — via some exposition-heavy voiceover, which means that the sludgy conveyance of these thoughts tip his film’s direction long before the plot has a chance to fully ripen.
Oblivion dreams big — its canvas is expansive. (Special IMAX presentations only enhance this effect.) Shot largely on location in Iceland, the film has a great look and mood, particularly in its opening hour, which has moments of trance-inducing beauty. Working with cinematographer Claudio Miranda and composers Anthony Gonzalez (of M83) and Joseph Trapanese (who collaborated with Daft Punk on the great Tron soundtrack), Kosinski trades in declamatory storytelling that lacks the more overt pomposity of something from Michael Bay. He aims to attach naked feeling to evocative imagery and sound; it’s like he’s aiming for involuntary audience response, akin to a doctor’s knee tap.
But Oblivion’s source material, and many antecedents, give it the feel of a cobbled together greatest hits album being dutifully plugged through by a reconstituted rock ‘n’ roll band. The Matrix, The Island and Total Recall are among the big touchstones here, but there are echoes of Moon, Solaris and THX-1138 as well. Even with its extraordinarily distinctive visual telling, paradoxically, little of the movie gives off the scent or vapor of originality. When it’s not papering over more interesting offshoot questions it raises, its narrative is busy ponderously cycling through clichéd dramatic obstacles on its way to a very familiar stand-off and climax. Cruise invests this tale with much intensity, but there’s not a depth or matching verve to the storytelling itself. (Universal, PG-13, 125 minutes)
