A veteran assigned to extract Earth's remaining resources begins to question what he knows about his mission and himself.
Too often, the muddled, twist-conscious plot feels lifeless, whilst the performances, notably Riseborough, rarely engage. Oblivion may impress with its scale. But rather like Kosinski’s depiction of Earth, it feels devoid of humanity – and that’s a major design flaw.
Never boring but only occasionally brilliant.
Oblivion goes on for a long time, moving slowly and self-consciously, and it looks like a very expensive movie project that has been written and rewritten many times over. It is a shame: Tom Cruise, Andrea Riseborough and Olga Kurylenko as the last love triangle left on Planet Earth should have been quite interesting.
Kosinski has again built a fantasy world that feels real to its core, but once more put most effort into the scenery and too little into the people.
Oblivion feels a little too content to get by on spectacle and star-power alone. Which is fine as far as it goes – there are certainly many worse blockbusters out there – but it’s not really enough to make it stick in the memory.
If Oblivion were a date, you’d give it high marks for first impressions, but might not stick around for pudding.
Oblivion looks and sounds great, but it lacks the sort of original idea which informs the best sci-fi. Reminiscent of a dozen or so genre classics, it’s like Tom Cruise playing WALL-E by way of Tron: Legacy.
As a piece of narrative...it's portentous, sluggish and fatally ungripping.
There is solid professionalism on display throughout Oblivion but just nothing to get very excited about.
Spectacularly dull.
It's to Kosinski's credit that he's made a slow-burning puzzler rather than a gung-ho action movie, but it's problematic, too. The dizzying visuals promise a sweeping adventure, so it's deflating to realise that you're actually watching a long episode of The Twilight Zone with some whizzy video-game sequences shoehorned in.
For all its dystopian sweep and moody posturing, Oblivion is too underpowered and underwritten to linger for long in the memory.
It makes one realise how little there is left to be said about the future.
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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