Cast: Tom Cruise, Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Riseborough, Morgan Freeman, Melissa Leo, Zoë Bell, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau.
KATHMANDU, April 21: Oblivion is yet another testimony that Tom Cruise is a Hollywood brat. Constantly overhyped because of his star power, almost all of his action movies drag on and this one is no different.
The movie kicks off with Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) having a recurring dream of New York ‘before the war’ and a woman in the Empire State Building.
Harper is living in a ‘tower’ sixty years after the war between humans and scavengers in which the latter destroyed the Moon and left the planet Earth lifeless. Harper is a technician living with his Communications Officer, Victoria (Andrea Riseborough). His job is to repair drones which guard the Earth from possible invasions by remaining scavengers. [break]
Morgan Freeman’s character comes in with no surprise. His group, who is initially mistaken for scavengers, turns out to be the remaining human survivors on Earth; leather-clad fierce bunch of guys fighting to set their planet free from outer space interference.
Oblivion does little or no justice to the genre of science fiction, even the most visually captivating scenes in this movie do not compensate for all that goes on, in the foreground.
The movie, with the level of virtual sophistication it has, would have been okay if it weren’t for the confusing narrative. The audience is expected to figure things out on their own and with enough reasoning; one can find a lot of loopholes which makes the movie absurd in the most unflattering way.
The title aptly summarizes how the audience is left to feel in the end.
Screening at QFX Cinemas
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