Oblivion // Review

I’ve heard it said that Sci-Fi has enjoyed something of a renaissance in recent years. This is undoubtedly true if your kind of Sci-Fi involves giant robots killing people, or giant robots killing giant lizards, or giant robots killing other giant robots.  That’s not my kind of Sci-Fi, though. My kind of Sci-Fi involves the ambitious presentation of imaginative stories based on big ideas and high concepts, and, with a few notable exceptions (Inception, Prometheus and Cloud Atlas, spring to mind) we don’t really get a lot of that in our multiplexes. Thankfully, Oblivion is my kind of Sci-Fi. Tom Cruise is the last man on Earth . Humanity has won a Pyrrhic victory over a mysterious alien force, so we find Cruise mopping up the mess after a brutal and bloody invasion, so to speak.  And that’s all I’m going to tell you. It works much better if you come to it ignorant. I will tell you, however, that it looks stunning. Director Joseph Kosinski’s previous film was the flawed but beautiful-to-look-at Tron: Legacy, and he’s brought the same sleek visual styling to this project. The cast don’t get in the way, either. Cruise, who is a hugely underrated actor IMHO, does a well-judged job, as do the small but perfectly formed supporting cast (nope, no names. There be spoilers.) So, come for the eye-candy, but stay for the story. It doesn’t exactly redefine the genre, but it is genuinely interesting, twisty and it builds to a satisfying climax. There’s even a couple of fights in there. With robots. Smallish ones though so, y’know, it’s OK. Jay Freeman