Oblivion

I’m not sure what’s with my recent fascination with Eastern European women; maybe it’s because they seem so submissive or perhaps it’s because they are so easily tricked due to the language barrier. But I just cant seem to get enough of them.  I blame the Bond girls in Goldeneye and beautiful Anishka, my lovely waitress in Prague who initially yelled at me “All American men are liars” and later invited me to the largest rave I’ve ever been to in my life. Sadly or thankfully I should say, this story didn’t end the way it could have; due to my friends informing me that because of the Czech Republic’s poor health care system they have a high contraction rate of AIDS there.

But these women seem to be following me! First it started off with this beautiful Russian woman coming up to me at work and saying the following “In Russia we say, that if a man beats you, that means he loves you”. Now I in no way condone or would ever put my hands on a woman in a harmful way but I do have to admit that I was slightly turned on by this. As if I needed yet another reason to go see Olga Kurylenko in Oblivion. Sadly she’s been the girl that no one wants to sleep with, check Hitman and Max Payne. And if there was anyone crazy enough to continue this tradition it would be none other than Sir Thomas Cruise. Oh and the fact that this was a sci-fi movie was the other reason I popped in on opening night.

So the creator of Oblivion, Joseph Krasinski, gives absolutely nothing away in the trailer for this film. It works out great for the movie going experience so that you can be pleasantly surprised by the story but at the same time, so little is shown in the preview that it just looks like Thomas Cruise is walking around telling lame stories while trying to avoid bandits. Do yourself a favor and see this film in spite of the trailer. The basic set up is this, the world was attacked by aliens that they called Scavengers. They destroyed the moon which put the world’s ecosystem in turmoil, causing massive earthquakes and floods. The humans left with no other alternative nuked the planet in order to defeat the enemy. The few remaining survivors had to leave the uninhabitable planet for a space station that orbits the Earth as they prepare to head for one of Saturn’s moons to live. Cruise and his lover/co worker Andrea Riseborough are the two remaining humans on Earth, who are there to protect the machines they have in place to take the planet’s natural resources and also to repair the drones they have in place to kill the remaining Scavs.

Well one day a small spaceship crash lands near Cruise’s home and it turns out to that it is carrying a beautiful Russian woman (Kurylenko) that immediately recognizes Cruise. He has also seen her in his dreams but what’s weird about this is, his memory has been wiped clean and she has been in cryo sleep for 60 years. The second these two start to communicate, Cruise’s world is turned upside down. The rest I will let you experience for yourself.

Krasinski almost to a fault, takes his time telling the story. Through Cruise’s secret desire to stay, he shows why we are so connected to our natural habitat and why leaving it would be so hard. At the same time, he uses caves and the night to create a setting that lets us know how vulnerable Cruise and Andrea are to their surroundings. There are several edgy moments that remind you of the scene where Will Smith is chasing after his dog in the dark building of I Am Legend. You want to yell, “Don’t go in there moron!” but unless you live in The Bronx, you won’t actually do it. Speaking of, this movie almost unaplogetically steals from a ton of other sci fi movies; which I am ok with because everyone does it. So before I go into any of the spoilers I will give you my rating of very FRESH! The only thing that keeps it from being tight is the crazy Cruise factor and the fact that certain scenes are exact replicas of other movies. But don’t lose sight of the fact that this is Cruise’s best movie in a decade and because he tones down the craziness, he’s actually pretty good in it. Oh yes, and Kurylenko is unbelievably tasty in it as well.

***SPOILER ALERT***

So as it turns out, the Scavengers aren’t aliens but in fact humans. And the space station that is orbiting the Earth is the alien life form that is sucking the Earth’s resources so that it’s species can continue to survive. Morgan Freeman plays the role of half Dennis Leary from Demolition Man and half Morpheus from the Matrix. He should have gotten fat for this role and had them steal Taco Bell.  He seemed to be having fun in it and is his usual solid self as he guides Cruise to the truth behind what's really going on. Also, if I were Tom Cruise’s character, the world would have just died. Because once I found out that there were thousands of clones of my girlfriend who all recognized me, I would’ve spent all of my time flying from zone to zone having sex with each one of them.  Screw going up to the alien spaceship Spaceballs style and attacking it!

It seems like Krasinski saw the third installment of The Matrix and hated it like we all did. So he set out to create the real ending to the trilogy minus a fat Morpheus, who in that movie was reduced to being the short alien sidekick to Lando Williams in Return of the Jedi. (my friend's joke not mine)