I saw Oblivion on a Tuesday night, and by Wednesday afternoon I was still mulling it over in my head, trying to put together some of the pieces. It's a sci-fi movie with a bit of action thrown in, and there's a major plot twist that complicates the entire movie. After talking the film over with some friends, I understand it enough now to write this review (hopefully!) and to also give my opinion on the movie - I got the gist of the film, but there's some details that are hard to figure out throughout it.
Earth, 2077. After a long war with the "scavs" (scavengers), the humans won, but destroyed Earth in the process - it is a shell of what it used to be. All of the humans now live on Titan, one of Saturn's moons, except for Jack (Tom Cruise) and Victoria (Andrea Riseborough, also in Disconnect), who monitor the drones that patrol the Earth looking for scavs. Jack is in charge of fixing these drones, and Victoria speaks with Sally (Melissa Leo) while he is out, who is their mission commander. Jack and Victoria know that they've had their memories wiped, so that mission details wouldn't be compromised, but he keeps having weird dreams that include a woman named Julia (Olga Kurylenko), and they feel almost like memories; one recurring one includes them walking the streets of New York City together. When an unauthorized aircraft drops from the sky, he finds four human survivors, three of which the drones kill; the fourth survivor is the woman from his dreams. With the help of Julie, Jack starts to realize that things on Earth might not be what they seem, and he finds out a number of disturbing truths about Earth and the new human colony on Saturn.
Tom Cruise plays a similar character in this movie as he does in most of his movies, but he's still good in the role. I liked Andrea Riseborough and Olga Kurylenko in their roles, as well, although it was strange to see Riseborough in this movie since I saw her in Disconnect recently too, which is also out this week. The cinematography, which was stunning to begin with, was fantastic to see in IMAX, and this is one of the rare occasions that I would recommend seeing this film in IMAX, or at the E3 theater at Emagine (similar to IMAX) - it was definitely an experience.
Yes, see this film. There were a lot of things I was confused about afterwards - a repeat viewing of the movie probably wouldn't hurt - and the movie still does have a lot of plot holes. People may complain that Oblivion is similar to many other sci-fi movies, like The Matrix, but I still enjoyed the film. Morgan Freeman is billed as one of the main actors in the film but actually does not have that much screentime, as the leader of a ragtag group of humans that are still existing on Earth; the main players in this film are Cruise, Riseborough, and their "boss," Melissa Leo. If you like sci-fi movies, you will enjoy Oblivion, and I found the movie to be very interesting, especially the technology used (the drones and others) and the flashbacks to 2017, when the human/scav war started.
Oblivion opened in theaters on April 19th, and is rated PG-13 with a runtime of 126 minutes. 4 stars out of 5.
Click here if Oblivion official movie trailer is not shown
=========================================================
=========================================================
Liz Parker is a University of Michigan graduate with a degree in Creative Writing and Literature, and she loves going to the movies. Visit her at her movie blog Yes/No Films
