Review of Oblivion (2013) by Harry W — 02 Jun 2014

Oblivion looked good on the surface due to its visual effects and production design, as well as presence of Morgan Freeman. But it looked bad because it featured Tom Cruise.

This proved to be an invalid judgement of mine, because Tom Cruise's performance was strong and charismatic, and there was no presence of the douchebag he is in real life which made him convincing, whereas the production design proved to be Oblivion's downfall.

Oblivion is far from original because its plot has been explored before to better extents, and the issue Oblivion faces which prevents it from being a better example of the genre is the empty atmosphere, because it makes Oblivion feel like its moving a lot slower than it actually is. It doesn't give it intensity, and its instead lacking in tenacity and failing to grip the audience, making it boring.

It also looks too aesthetically smooth to have a post-apocalyptic exploration feel, because everything is practically a shade of white or grey which prevents it from being colourfully visually striking film, and instead is overly bland and uncreative, making it a very dry film. It gives off a sense of being a combination between a medieval drama and a post-apocalyptic science fiction action film, but director Joseph Kosinksi fails to find the balance to make it work.

Also, the quantity of action within the first hour is way to minimal for its own good, especially because the action proved to be very well shot and edited and rises above the standards for modern day action films. There is less than 5 minutes of action overall within the first hour, and any good director should know that an action film must pace its action out consistently over the feature length period, and films such as Gone in 60 Seconds and Rambo proved to make this mistake in the past. Oblivion makes this mistake in the present, and retreads the errors director Joseph Kosinksi made in the past when he directed Tron: Legacy, as well as making the mistake of creating an overly long, slow monochromatic science fiction film that is inconsistent in action. Joseph Kosinksi just really needs to pick up his game, because the technical achievement of his films, that is the skilful cinematography, strong film editing and good visual effects show promise for him. Unfortunately, it doesn't overshadow his inability to create a worthy story which can hold a viewer's interest when matched with such a lacklustre script and big scale action which just turns into the cut scene from a video game despite being advertised as looking better.

And despite giving a huge credit to Morgan Freeman, he makes about 5 minutes of screen presence throughout all of Oblivion and so Joseph Kosinksi only makes use of his name instead of him as an actor. Although Morgan Freeman gives a routine strong performance, more is expected of him considering his credit and stature as an actor, and so it would have been appropriate to cast an actor who can work with very little and make a memorable character in the brief time period, with my first recommendation being Ving Rhames. Ving Rhames would have been awesome, but fans of Morgan Freeman are likely to be disappointed by his tiny role in Oblivion.

Oblivion is some kind of big-scale post apocalyptic version of Phantasm, and I didn't even like Phantasm so why I would enjoy an attempt to convert it into a ludicrously plotted and poorly written Tom Cruise movie is beyond me. To summarise, Oblivion is too long, too slow, too short on action, and too boring to constitute a good film.