Oblivion

OBLIVION
starring Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Riseborough, and Tony Randall as The Beav.

A science fiction tale of a man named Jack Harper (Cruise), who is one of the few remaining humans on Earth after a destructive war with an alien race known as the "Scavs."  While carrying out his job as a drone repairman, he encounters a crashed spaceship.  The contents...and one of the crewmembers...of the ship cause him to realize that everything he knows about the war, the Earth, and humanity itself may not be what it seems.

That's right.  Our protagonist must ask "what is real anymore?"  and thereby enter protracted ratiocination.  Never seen that before in science fiction.
There is a lot going on in this science fiction opus.  Perhaps that is why it comes off as so disjointed.  For example, there are strong allusions to 2001, the ever popular trope of "we're losing our humanity" as symbolized by Jack's Thoreau-esque cabin in the woods, the common post-apocalyptic meme of Earth's greatest constructs in ominous ruin, a painful love triangle (like there is any other kind) and spectacularly cinematic landscapes with brilliant special effects.  Oh and a lot of Tom Cruise flying back and forth between his "sky house" and the world below.  Yeah.  Whole lotta that.  But there's also Morgan Freeman, for about a whole fifteen minutes or so of screen time.  At least you get to see him behind the handles of twin .50 caliber machine guns.  There is also the rather annoying appearance of "massive empty space inside a gigantic spaceship." Actually, it's only been annoying since I read a scientist explaining how utterly impractical said empty room is on a ship.  Anyway...

It's not a bad film.  It's just terribly jumbled.  My recommendation is to wait for DVD or streaming on Netflix.  Still waiting for a truly mind-blowing science fiction film to come into theaters.

HOWEVER, one big plus of the film is that Jack's cabin has a few vinyl LPs that survived the apocalypse.  One of them is Duran Duran's Rio.
I was unable to restrain my cry of "YES!" in the theater.

 
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