In a thrilling epic directed by Joseph Kosinski, Tom Cruise must accomplish an impossible mission by pushing his aircraft to the limits and defying orders. No, it’s not 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick, because in this movie, the planet Earth has already been decimated. But nine years before Cruise and Kosinski’s collaboration yielded blockbuster gold with the critically acclaimed Top Gun sequel, the pair of them teamed up for the unfairly maligned Oblivion. Eleven years after its release, Oblivion represents an interesting moment for science fiction cinema, a time in which concepts that would probably be turned into entire TV series were compacted into slick films, light on realism, and heavy on relentlessly pacing and awesome production design.
Oblivion is not the best Tom Cruise sci-fi action flick ever, and that’s mostly because Minority Report exists. But despite some of its textual silliness, this slick film still delivers the goods, even if, today, it feels more like a Black Mirror episode with a big budget, rather than an entire film. It’s just hit Netflix and is certainly worth a look if your memories of it are as hazy as the mandatory memory wipe Tom Cruise has before the movie begins.
