Oblivion: Stark and slow


Oblivion
Starring: Tom Cruise, Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Riseborough, Morgan Freeman
At: DT Cinemas
Rated: 4/10
There’s Tom Cruise, there’s Morgan Freeman and there is a whole lot of sci-fi ado. Yet, Oblivion turns out to be a too-stark and a too-slow post-apocalypse futuristic film in which there are no humans left on the face of the Earth.
So if there are no humans, there is definitely no soul and the film lives up to the latter billing. It comes across as a well-designed but non-human film in which the drama — if any —emanates only from the awesome visuals that resemble some good photography staring out of a plush post-millennium design book.
Around a stark landscape, hanging in a cloudy horizon, is Tom Cruise’s glass abode. Everything is picture perfect, including his shower cubicle and his swimming pool, not to mention his glider chopper in which he flies down to inspect mother Earth. But except for his groovy smile and a few romps in the bed with his communication officer, there is nothing really he does to either bring back humanity to Earth or save the future. Ditto with Morgan Freeman who is so hugely wasted in this movie that he might just sue the director at this late age!
Oblivion needed much more than what it propels on the big screen.
Source: Sunday Pioneer, 14 April, 2013

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