Oblivion review

‘Tron: Legacy’ director Joseph Kosinski brings his own graphic novel to life in another dazzling sci-fi epic that somehow looks too big for an IMAX screen. Marooning Tom Cruise on an empty planet Earth, Kosinski has his work cut out trying to find any substance beneath his style - but with a style this impressive, it’s easy to forgive him.

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A quick prologue tells you everything you need to know. Earth has been destroyed by aliens. Humanity won the war but lost most of the planet in the battle – forced to evacuate the survivors to a moon of Saturn. Cruise is Commander Jack Harper, a repairman left behind to fix drones that protect the remaining energy plants from the remnant alien militia. Stranded in a nuclear wasteland, Jack spends his days zipping around a wrecked New York in his spaceship and/or foldable motorbike, and his evenings skinny-dipping in his luxury apartment with his uptight wife (Andrea Riseborough). So far, so ‘WALL-E’.

The real action doesn’t start until the midway point when a run in with the aliens, a mysterious radio signal and a crashed spaceship send the plot twisting and turning into a full blown sensory blitz. There’s ‘Top Gun’ style dogfights, ‘Terminator’ style robo-battles and ‘Total Recall’ style memory lapses. There’s also Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (‘Game Of Thrones’) to bolster the scanty cast – which is no bad thing after an hour spent staring at Tom Cruise trying to build a character with nothing but aviator shades and a grin.

Monochromatic in gleaming neon whites and blues, visually stunning and strangely cold, Kosinski’s post-apocalyptic future looks a bit like the Apple store. Drifting through clouds, deserts and starscapes with an architect’s eye, every frame of Kosinski’s grand sci-fi is filled with striking symmetry and high-gloss sheen. Even the actors look like part of the digitally cut scenery, with Cruise’s iconic silhouette, Kurylenko’s supermodel pout and Riseborough’s naked bum framed like galleried modern art.

Equally impressive is the blistering digital sound design - coupled with a soaring synthpop soundtrack from French indietronic band M83 (almost as perfect a match as Kosinski’s last partnership with Daft Punk in ‘Tron Legacy’).

Looking and sounding like an post-rock music video, ‘Oblivion’ is a story told in widescreen with the volume cranked up to 11. Stirring and portentous even in the quieter moments, the subtleties of emotion are lost somewhere under the wheels of Kosinski’s beautiful juggernaut.

With a thin cast, a thinner script and little variation in the cold, grim visuals, ‘Oblivion’ feels long even when it isn’t – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Make no mistake, this isn’t another ‘Transformers’. Whilst other summer blockbusters are content to blow away the eyes and ears of the audience with a shotgun blast of quick-cuts and dynamite, ‘Oblivion’ takes its time, draws you in and never compromises. It might owe plenty to other movies, but it also feels completely original. More of a cinema experience than a film - big, bold, cold sci-fi has never looked, or sounded, better.