Oblivion. Directed by Joseph Kosinski. Starring Tom Cruise.
Rating: 7 (out of 10)
TOM Cruise is speeding away from his aircraft on a motorbike. He has a penchant for aviator sunglasses.
But it's not 1986, and this isn't Top Gun. When Cruise does some fancy flying those aren't MiGs on his tail but unmanned killer drones that look like Magic 8 balls, or HAL let loose from the Kubrick set.
It's 2077, a solemn voiceover tells us, and though we won the war we decimated the planet. Landmarks are left derelict, half-buried and solitary in an America - where else would we be? - half-covered in radiation.
Jack Harper (Cruise), may sport a bland action-hero name but he's pretty amazing at everything else: he can repair expensive equipment with chewing gum, and considering his pretty partner's willingness to defrock, he's obviously pretty good at that, too.
Jack and Victoria (Andrea Riseborough, W.E.) are only two weeks away from the end of their thousand-plus-day assignment. Then they'll join what's left of the population on the Tet (which can be seen in the opening Universal logo) a command central that looms in the sky and is waiting to transport the population to their new colony on a Mars moon.
Jack is here for drone maintenance, to help keep the massive aqua-extractors safe from the scavengers that still roam Earth.
The machines are sucking the planet dry of seawater, an essential source of energy for the Tet and the colony. Jack gets to explore what's on the ground, the bits-and-bobs left over from civilization; poor Victoria is going a little stir crazy from not having left their chic abode in the sky, or maybe she's just ticked off by the apparent need for high heels in the future?
We know that something isn't quite right: command central in the Tet is manned by a slightly creepy Melissa Leo (complete with a honey-dripper southern accent), who asks Victoria daily if she and Jack are still an "effective team." It's been five years since the mandatory memory wipe. Plus those drones don't always seem to have Jack's back.
Jack is haunted by a dream. Or is it a memory? And he doesn't really want to leave: "in spite of all that's happened, Earth is still my home."
But it isn't until the crash landing of a foreign object that the mysteries start to unspool, explained by Morgan Freeman in fewer scenes than the trailers suggest, and highlighted by Olga Kurylenko in others.
Tron: Legacy director Joseph Kosinski lets the film breathe and takes time with the setup: a big-budget rarity. His set-pieces in a ruined library and by a freshwater lake provide pretty and welcome respite from the requisite chase-and-destroy scenes (see Oblivion in Imax for thundering, seat-rumbling effect). And the climactic scene with an alien being is magic.
But the characters Kosinski created in his unpublished graphic novel are interesting enough that we wish we could spend more time with them, even Jack, though Cruise is occasionally a little ham-fisted in his delivery.
The film resembles in places everything from Star Wars to The English Patient but boasts a refreshingly original premise. And those of you weaned on H.G. Wells are welcome to pick at the black holes in the science: the rest of us will just enjoy the ride.
