The most tired discussion in film comes from whether or not Tom Cruise is still a box-office draw. Well with Oblivion it doesn’t really matter because the movie is really good. Released a few weeks short of the powerhouse genre films, Oblivion stars Cruise as one of the last people left on Earth after a war with aliens. The humans won, but the planet is so messed up the population has moved on. Cruise’s character and his partner/love interest played by Andrea Riseborough stay behind to fix drones and help with pulling Earth’s remaining resources. What a straight forward plot. Not quite!
The film has a handful of major twists, each one bigger and more surprising than the last. These developments are tough to advertise since they are major spoilers, but they are definitely worth considering when judging the film. I have said before that Cruise’s sci-fi pedigree is a strong one. So his involvement in Oblivion did bode well for the film. His performance fit with what we have come to expect from the A-lister. He is consistent and convincing. Other than Riseborough, his costars like Morgan Freeman, Melissa Leo and Olga Kurylenko are mostly underutilized and uninteresting. I know it’s almost blasphemous in 2013 to do anything but blindly praise Freeman. But anyone could have played his role.
The film is a CGI heavy spectacle that showcases sweeping landscapes and a number of very memorable moments. The fact that Oblivion deals with only a handful of characters among an equal number of inanimate drones speaks to Cruise’s ability to easily carry a film on his shoulders. I don’t know if the movie is a classic and it probably won’t be remembered as one of Cruise’s best, but it definitely stands up as a quality lead-in to the summer blockbuster season.
Each film earns either zero, a half or a full arrow in five categories. The categories are Acting, Writing/Directing, Emotion, Innovation and Overall Impression. The arrows are added up to equal the full score.
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