Review of OBLIVION

OBLIVION

JACK HARPER (Tom Cruise) and his lover, VICTORIA OLSEN (Vika) share a luxurious flat with a swimming pool.  They have a view that is out of this world, mainly because their home, Tower 49, lies on top of a metal strip 3000 feet high. Jack's job is to supervise and repair drones that protect the power stations on an Earth ruined by alien invaders--Scavs (scavengers.)  (Vika's job is to supervise Jack.) Sixty years ago, these aliens destroyed the moon, thus causing extremely nasty weather (tsunamis, etc), and then invaded Earth itself, so humanity had to use nuclear bombs to repel them. End result: a devastated home planet so that now everyone is moving to Saturn's moon, Titian.  But first they go to the TET, a massive tetrahedronal space station.

The two are scheduled to finish their jobs in two weeks and move to Titan. Vika, who loves Jack more than the reverse, is eager to go, but Jack isn't. Though supposedly both their memories were erased for reasons not immediately revealed, Jack still has recollections of standing on an undamaged Empire State Building with a beautiful woman who is not Vika. 

Jack and Vika don't have much of a social life.  Their only human contact is SALLY, a woman on the Tet who gives them instructions in a monotonous Southern drawl and keeps asking Vika if she and Jack are an effective team, which seems to mean are they still screwing.  Vika always gives an enthusiastic 'yes.'

One day, Jack lands on Earth's surface to fix a drone, and gets a glimpse of the Scavs, who look suspiciously like Tuscon Raiders from Tatooine.  Then matters get complicated.

I have two problems with Tom Cruise's movies.  The first is that, no matter what the predicament, he'll come out of it with nothing more than a few scratches and a 'Hell-of-a-day' smile.  One way or another, he's always alive at the end of the movie, so there's no suspense.  Second, whenever I see him, I think of the South Park episode in which Tom goes into a literal closet and people keep saying--you got it--'Tom, come out of the closet.'

The movie has clones, AI's, a lot of Star Wars imagery, nice eye candy, significant amounts of nonsense, and Morgan Freeman, the only black guy in the film.  His part is disappointingly small and--SPOILER ALERT--he gets killed. Actually, the black guy getting killed is so common in American films, it isn't much of a surprise.

All in all, this is not a movie to take seriously, but it's often fun, and several sections get your pulse up to a run.  I'll be generous and give it ++++.

If you like these reviews, please leave a comment.  I'm beginning to wonder if it's worth while continuing them.