Oblivion
Opens Friday at Dunbar, Scotiabank
Tom Cruise is speeding away from his aircraft on a motorbike. He has a penchant for aviator sunglasses.
But its not 1986, and this isnt Top Gun. When Cruise does some fancy flying those arent MiGs on his tail but unmanned killer drones that look like Magic 8 balls, or HAL let loose from the Kubrick set.
Its 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 hes pretty amazing at everything else: he can repair expensive equipment with chewing gum, and considering his pretty partners willingness to defrock, hes obviously pretty good at that, too.
Jack and Victoria (Andrea Riseboroughare) are only two weeks away from the end of their 1,000-plus-day assignment. Then they'll join whats 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 whats 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 shes just ticked off by the apparent need for high heels in the future?
We know that something isnt 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. Its been five years since the mandatory memory wipe. Plus those drones dont always seem to have Jacks back.
Jack is haunted by a dream. Or is it a memory? And he doesnt really want to leave: in spite of all thats happened, Earth is still my home.
But it isnt 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.
