Oblivion
★★
(2013)
SFX wunder-kid Joseph Kosinski's second Sci-Fi effort is a seriously beautiful looking and sounding failure peppered with rehashed ideas and predictable twists. Elements of Total Recall, Moon, The Matrix and countless other philosophical concept genre powerhouses are pilfered from at random to fashion an empty panoramic world destroyed by and invaded by aliens. Immaculately shot, designed and scored, Oblivion is pure eye candy promising a Solaris like meta puzzle but opting for a ludicrous Independence Day inspired finale which leaves a very bitter taste in the mouth.
The set up smacks of deja-vu; The humans have scampered and are living above the earth on a space craft called the Tet while mining the remaining power from the oceans via automated rigs, guarded by drones, before they all scoot off to Titan and start anew. A lone couple remain on the scorched earth (or more accurately, in a house on top of a pole) to maintain the drone guards; Jack (A charisma low Tom Cruise) and Victoria (A cold and beautiful Andrea Riseborough) have it pretty good.
Their Apple, or perhaps Antoine Predock, designed penthouse in the clouds, with voice activated everything and a heated under house pool, would be a pretty good perk of the job if Jack wasn't out every day in his hover plane getting shot at by "Scavengers", the alien race responsible for our demise. Haunted by dreams of a mystery woman (Olga Kurylenko) and with a mounting presence of scavenger activity, things soon become clear to Jack that their WALL-E like existence, with embarrassing midnight skinny dipping, might not be all as it seems.
Kosinski's superficial film, is a beast to look at and listen to. The soundtrack by M83 is a cranking synth-rich wonder; Painfully clean, calculated and controlled and shot mostly on location in Iceland and Louisiana, it has a surprising realism to it to begin with which a lot of modern Sci-Fi extravaganzas fail in but the emptiness of the films characters and slow plot aren't enough to set the thing alight in the slightest. You can smell the homages a mile off and as they culminate in the film's scrappy second half you could write the rest of the script in the dark on a piece of A5.
Film student sci-fi staples including doppelgangers, endless dream sequences, obvious twists and pitiful revelations (delivered though a totally wasted Morgan Freeman) fall ultimately flat and Oblivion ends up as a pretty picture postcard from the future with nothing of any interest at all scrawled on the back.
