Review: Oblivion (2013)

Review by Disgruntled Monkey

Director: Joseph Kosinski
Starring: Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko & Andrea Riseborough
Writers: Karl Gajdusek & Michael Arndt

I was really hoping that Oblivion would be good. But I didn't get a good vibe from the trailers. It looked really pretty but there was something about the overall story that just didn't sit well with me. To top it off Tom Cruise looked like he was playing Tom Cruise, which is the worst of the Tom Cruises.

Pretty much everything I felt from the trailers proved to be correct. Which is a mammoth shame as there were nuggets of something in this script, but they never came to fruition. In the end we got a mess of a movie where not a whole heck of a lot happened.

In part I was turned away by Tom Cruise. Now he is a good actor and I've seen films he's been in that I've greatly enjoyed, however in this he doesn't seem to be trying and just comes across as Tom Cruise at the end of the world. Morgan Freeman also seems to be phoning it in, and Olga Kurylenko is really nothing more than a plot device.

Without any actors to get behind, the plot had to do work and it failed. While there are some ideas here that are intriguing, as well as world building that is impressive, overall the plot is a mess full of holes. Also for such a long movie nothing felt like it was happening. At the end I was bored and just wanted the movie to be over.

Overall the movie is visually impressive but offers nothing that I would recommend to people. It's a shame as I think Kosinski is an interesting director who has a great style. Unfortunately he has yet to build a movie that really works. Pass this one up.

Category	Rating	Reason
Entertainment	0 baseballs out of 1	Boring.
Script	0 baseballs out of 1	Plot holes that a truck can drive through.
Acting	0 baseballs out of 1	Good actors don't equal good times all the time.
Directing	0.5 baseball out of 1	Kosinski has some style but the movie is a mess.
Technical	1 baseball out of 1	World Building is impressive even if it's wasted.
Overall	1.5 baseballs out of 5	Just avoid. Not enough here for even a glance.