Plenty of life in this tale of adying Earth
JACK Harper (Tom Cruise) is the last man on Earth. It’s not a bad existence. He gets to live in a super-desirable pad in the sky, with a glass swimming pool looking down through the clouds, alongside the last woman on Earth, his doting partner and colleague Victoria (Andrea Riseborough). All they have to do is mind the shop: protect the rigs that are extracting the last of the dying planet’s natural resources, to be used by mankind in its new home on a distant moon.
Loneliness and nostalgia for loved ones have been countered by a “mandatory memory wipe” – what a great phrase – that leaves only a little history. When Jack speaks of the alien invasion and the war that destroyed Earth, it’s not from his own memories, but received information; when an image of New York before the war comes into his mind, he assumes it’s just a dream.
This state of oblivion – and his need to learn the truth about the planet – i nforms not j ust Jack’s progress through this wellconceived science fiction adventure, but ours. Needless to say, sci-fi characters who think they’re alone on a planet, or in space, seldom are.
Joseph Kosinski’s first and only previous movie was Tron: Legacy, a film whose special effects took such precedence over story and character that the whole experience was a washout. Oblivion isn’t a full redemption: while taking too The Place Beyond The Pines (15) After the success of Drive, intelligent woman’s pin-up Ryan Gosling swaps cars for motorbikes, as a stunt rider turned bank robber. Bradley Cooper is the local cop he comes up against, whose tenacity will change both their lives. Director Derek Cianfrance, who directed Gosling in the wondrous Blue Valentine, is less assured with this ambitious but problematic crime drama. Simon Killer (18) Dark American drama in which a student (Brady Corbet) flees to Paris to recover from a break-up. There he starts a relationship with a prostitute and slowly reveals why he might not be the ideal boyfriend. Scary Movie 5 (15) Hollywood outcasts Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan play themselves in the latest instalment of the not-atall scary and comedically challenging spoof franchise. They could be the most horrifying things in it. much time with his plot, Kosinski still fails to flesh out his characters as much as one would like. Jack’s predicament doesn’t pack quite the emotional punch that it should, while actors of the calibre of Morgan Freeman, Melissa Leo and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (aka the gloriously bad Jaime Lannister from Game Of Thrones) can offer little more than two dimensions.
That said, Oblivion is a far better film than Tron: Legacy. It is beautifully mounted, from the images of the ruined planet to Jack’s hi-tech home and insect-like craft – halfplane, half-helicopter and looking like terrific fun to fly; there are some exciting action sequences, in particular one in which Jack plays cat and mouse with some nasty little drones, which brings to mind the dogfights in Star Wars; and the multiple reveals towards the end are certainly worth waiting for.
The star seems to be having a ball in his flying machines and motorbikes, reliving his Top Gun days. But at the same time, his slightly worn and naïve planetary caretaker reminds me of the cute little robot in Disney-Pixar’s classic WALL-E. Jack is quite a sweet soul, fond of the planet he’s about to leave and curious about everything he finds in it, whether it be a dusty book in a decaying library or a rural idyll hidden inside a canyon.
Cruise and Riseborough also do a good job of conveying a couple who have little in common other than the delusion of happiness, telling each other they are an “effective team”, while he stretches his wings on the surface of the planet and she cocoons herself in lies behind her console in the sky.
This aspect is a reminder that, as enjoyable as special effects and action sequences may be, the best sci-fi is rooted in character. When Kosinski ditches the toys, he’ll make a really good film.