Oblivion

Oblivion is a technical triumph rather than a philosophical breakthrough, demonstrating how beautifully digital effects can be blended with real people and real sets, demonstrating that neither Tom Cruise nor the 1970s will ever die, and announcing the unexpected arrival of a major science-fiction director. Read full review

Oblivion has the ability to haunt you visually and, with an unanticipated love story, even emotionally. Read full review

It’s a visually arresting movie. But as the plot layers are peeled back, and we’re given one answer after another, Oblivion actually becomes less interesting. Read full review

After a slow start, this is the rare film that gets better as it goes along. The story, about two scientists working in a post-apocalyptic New York, deepens and builds an intense rooting interest. The action sequences are too much out of a video game, but this is intelligent science fiction -- and it benefits enormously from Tom Cruise in the lead role.

Despite various shoot-outs, dogfights, chases, and crashes, Oblivion is not a teen-friendly film. The storyline is too dense and the pacing too uneven. Read full review

Oblivion is a terrific-looking movie, alternating spare, sterile environments with homey organic ones, and making both look tremendously pretty. Kosinski also handles his action well, with cut-and-dried clarity and edge-of-seat energy. Read full review

The story probably doesn’t stand up to heavy scrutiny, and at times the effort by star and director shows. But at least the effort is there. Read full review

Oblivion is an absolutely gorgeous film dramatically caught between its aspirations for poetic romanticism and the demands of heavy sci-fi action. After a captivating beginning brimming with mystery and evident ambition, the air gradually seeps out of the balloon that keeps this thinly populated tale aloft, leaving the ultimate impression of a nice try that falls somewhat short of the mark. Read full review

Oblivion is Moebius-comic gorgeous and it sounds great, especially the loud, nervewracking honks the drones make when they're weighing whether or not to shoot you. I suppose that's a surface appeal. But it's a nice surface. Read full review

Glaringly indebted to several earlier works and the film overall remains beholden to one established brand above all others: Tom Cruise. Read full review

It is overlong, and familiar, and never quite hits top gear -- it's never especially bad, but neither is it especially excellent, beyond the visual wow factor. But there's still a lot to admire in the film, not least that it's engaging from the first moment to the last. Read full review

Oblivion occupies an awkward no-man's-land between escapist space adventure and heady science fiction, but it's neither thrilling enough nor intellectually stimulating enough to satisfy devotees of either. Read full review

Oblivion is a slick spectacle — seeing the humorless but ultra-fit Tom Cruise wrestle with himself might be worth the price of admission alone. Read full review

Oblivion is an okay blockbuster, a multimillion-dollar exercise in competence. Read full review

It’s an engrossing, if complicated and twisty, story, with plentiful sci-fi action and a provocative subtext about the nature of the human soul. At times, however, the balance between those two things feels off. Read full review

By the end of the film, Leo is beginning to sound suspiciously like HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Robotic, and more than a little peeved. Read full review

Oblivion is a lot like its star: clean, cold, efficient, increasingly overblown, and not a little inexplicable. Read full review

That doesn’t make Oblivion a bad movie, just a familiar one — generic. Read full review

Granted, "intelligent" might be too generous a word to describe Oblivion, which flirts with big questions, but never answers them. What's left is a story that doesn't quite go where no man has gone before. Read full review

The good news: Here's a lavish, serious science-fiction picture, one that on occasion transcends big-budget hit-making convention to glance against grandeur...Which brings us to Tom Cruise, the not-necessarily-good news. However engaging its end-times mysteries, Oblivion is still a Tom Cruise movie. Read full review

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. Read full review

It isn’t a reboot or reimagining, refreshingly, but Oblivion plays like a stylised remix of superior sci-fi ground-breakers. Cruise and Kosinski: they might be an effective team, but pioneers they’re not. Read full review

A moderately clever dystopian mindbender with a gratifying human pulse, despite some questionable narrative developments along the way. Read full review

Oblivion has enough special-effects artistry to keep you distracted for a while. But all the eye candy in the world can’t mask the sensation that you’ve seen this all before…and done better. Read full review

Oblivion is a special effects extravaganza with a lot of blatant symbolism and very little meaning. It starts slow, turns dull and then becomes tedious — which makes it a marginal improvement over the earlier film. It features shiny surfaces, clicky machinery and no recognizable human behavior. It's equally ambitious and gormless. Read full review

In space, Jack hopes, someone may hear you dream. But in a movie theater, no one will see you yawn. Read full review

Yet Oblivion is worth the trip. There are two reasons for this. The first is the cinematography of Claudio Miranda. Read full review

Without an exceptionally skilled director of actors (such as Cameron Crowe), Cruise can’t dial up much emotion, so the two love interests for his character are two more than he can convincingly handle. He may be at home in the cockpit of a killing machine, but when it comes to displaying his humanity, he’s no Wall-E. Read full review

The questions raised by Oblivion aren’t especially deep, but the movie does answer a puzzler that has troubled humankind for generations: Can Tom Cruise build a concept so big that he himself can’t lift it? Read full review

For its first hour or so, Oblivion is a visually mesmerizing, intriguing picture that doesn’t feel like the same-old: It engages your eyes and piques your curiosity. Then, gradually, the novelty wears off, the clichés start to pile up and we’re back to Post-Apocalyptic Dystopia 101. Read full review

Oscar-winners Morgan Freeman and Melissa Leo turn up in cameo roles anyone could have played. Kosinski was smart to limit their screen time, because it’s awkward to have actors with weight and charisma hanging around those who lack both. Read full review

Oblivion is odder and less conventional than your average forgettable star vehicle; at times it feels like a five-character play taking place in a digital-effects lab. But there's not much energy to it. Read full review

For all the bells and whistles – an electronic score by M83, a screen-busting Imax presentation and Cruise going full throttle – Oblivion feels arid and antiseptic, untouched by human hands. Bummer. Read full review

Admirable in its look and style, the film is not unique or exceptional. Nevertheless, given the state of current science-fiction fare, the film does hold its own. Read full review

Oblivion is like that movie-within-a-movie: Everything in it feels 100 percent inauthentic. That vibe, as it happens, turns out to be intentional. But when the humans arrive, it’s still a narcotic. Read full review

The mystery posed by Oblivion as a whole is why its mysteries are posed so clumsily, and worked out so murkily. Read full review

Kosinski’s ultimately underwhelming film leads nowhere. As its palpable sense of dread — well-sustained in a gently cascading first hour — gives way to dead ends, this Omega Movie shoots itself in the foot. Read full review

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: Cruise, Riseborough and Kurylenko as the last love triangle left on Planet Earth should have been quite interesting. Read full review

Kosinski continues to lavish far more thought on how his elaborate fantasy worlds look than how they work, and neither the politics nor the human stakes here coalesce into rational or relatable drama. Read full review

Oblivion never transcends its inspirations to become anything other than a thin copy. Read full review

Absent of any sense of self-awareness, Oblivion seems only self-serious, a ponderous mess both misguided and unaware. Read full review