Oblivion

            There's a special place in Hell for people who talk loudly throughout a movie.  The man behind me in the theater yesterday will find out firsthand just how hard it is to talk when your mouth is filled with razor blades and Satan's little helpers are stabbing you in the ass with needles.  I even asked him to be quiet, twice, but I think he was partially deaf.

            On to the review!

            This weekend's movie was Oblivion, a new Tom Cruise action vehicle.  Also, it was a hot mess.  It felt like a half dozen of his previous films all rolled into one in an attempt to make a Steven Spielberg-style thinking man's Sci-Fi film.  It made me want to play a bunch of video games like Portal 2, Deus Ex and Fallout.  What it did not do was impress me with its own story.

            The plot is pretty simple, but I can't go into much detail because the entire thing hinges on two twists.  The first one you already know if you've seen a single trailer for the film.  The second one is so terribly masked that my friend and I both figured it out 5 minutes into its 125 minute run time.

            So what I can tell you is this:  Tom Cruise is Jack, a guy who spends all day running maintenance on a bunch of security drones that protect giant machines.  These machines turn seawater into fusion energy.  His partner Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) monitors him from their house in the clouds and stays in contact with their superiors in space.

            The problem is, Jack is a curious sort of guy while Victoria just wants to do the job and take the next train to Titan and be with the rest of humanity.  Of course, curiosity killed the cat, so shit happens.  Also, Morgan Freeman is there.

            My problem with Oblivion isn't that it's a bad movie.  It is actually an entertaining movie.  My problem is that it's so damn lazy.  Every single plot point is predictable, and just in case you're a blithering idiot, someone on screen will quite literally lay it out for you verbally.  There is a ton of pointless dialog, and the movie is about 45 minutes longer than it has any right to be.

            However it is a freaking gorgeous waste of time.  The special effects are fantastic and all the shiny toys and gadgets are fantastically rendered.  I especially liked how awesome the security drones looked, even if they did seem to be a minor Portal rip-off.

            The long and short of it is, if Tom Cruise thought he was kicking off the summer Blockbuster season this weekend, he was wrong.  What he did do was prove to you that he can totally act, he just doesn't give a shit.