Oblivion

First Hit:  Although confusing at times, an interesting story line and Cruise is solid.

The confusion around the story expresses itself with narratives and character dialogues specifically "telling versus showing" to keep the story in the boundaries the filmmakers wanted. 

When the director and writer have to do this and not let the film tell the story with pictures and non-explanatory dialogue, then there is a problem. However, this film makes up for it in visual crispness and the idea that we have been replicated and are remnants and memories of who we were.

Jack has dreams of another life with a woman and when the plot (confusingly) sends a space craft which introduces this woman of his dreams (his earthly wife) Julia (Olga Kurylenko) I had a difficult time wondering how this worked. Where did the space vehicles come from that brought real humans of our past? 

Although the answer to this is question is given towards the end of the film, Julia's arrival created confusion and took me away  from the story. Jack (Tom Cruise) and Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) are “an effective team” whose job is for Jack to fix drones which protect machines sucking all the life out of the oceans while Team Leader Victoria guides and provides support for Jack from their home in the sky. Victoria talks/works with “Sally” (Melissa Leo) a woman who invites kindness with her southern accent.

Sally appears to be the boss of all the machines. The reason for Jack and Victoria's work is that there are "Scavs" (scavengers?) who are damaging the drones and want to damage the machines that are sucking the life out of the ocean (earth). Leading the Scavs, who are remaining humans on earth, is Beech (Morgan Freeman). His band of rebels reaches out to Jack because they think he has enough of his human memory left that he can be "turned" to help them defeat the alien force.

Cruise is as he always is, brave, charming, and the hero of his films. However, he is reliable and always delivers his role with conviction. Risenborough is good but her limited character’s role made it difficult to care much. Kurylenko is very good and is as strong as Cruise and Freeman. Freeman is perfect as the guy with a vision that humans will persevere. Leo is good in a mostly voice and video picture representation and version of the aliens. Joseph Kosinski and Karl Gajdusek wrote the script which didn’t always work. Kosinski directed the film and didn’t really get how the audience might see/interpret his vision.

Overall:  This was interesting enough to keep me engaged and wanting to see the end.

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