Oblivion (2013)

 By now, it would seem to be the case that Tom Cruise is pretty much incapable of doing anything other than your run of the mill action movie that is semi-successful but never really gets remembered. He's trying, bless him, but none of them really seem to stand out and make it to that place where the likes of 'Indiana Jones', 'Die Hard' and 'The Dark Knight' reside in the minds of movie goers. His latest attempt is the story of Jack, one man of a two part team who has been assigned to extract the final resources that Earth has to offer after the human race has left this planet and ventured out into space. However, after being told that the Earth is uninhabitable after years of war with an alien race, he discovers that this may not be the case and a crashed spacecraft may help his discover the truth and the real reason behind his stay on Earth.

 Not to be down-hearted to begin with or anything but I am not a fan of this type of film. Earth being uninhabitable, all humans leaving the planet, something's not quite right and it turns out there's some secret plot to take over the world and all that jazz. It's just been done too many times. God knows, even Pixar has gone there. So for me, this was just another rehash of the same storyline with a slightly different plot twist. *SPOILER* The ending was more creative than I was expecting, with it actually turning out that Jack is a clone and there are many versions of him looking after the planet. Oh, and they all happen to be highly trained soldiers. What a convenient coincidence! Anyway, as I said, the storyline overall is nothing special and nothing particularly new or imaginative.

 To turn an eye to the actors, again it is a typical Tom Cruise movie. He is good at what he does and it is still impressive how he does all the stunts and all that, but it doesn't stand out as one of his best performances. The performances by his two female co-stars, Julia played by Olga Kurylenko and Victoria played by Andrea Riseborough, are also equally good but don't stand out and (as is the case with every movie Tom Cruise is in) it is well and truly about him with no other character really being given the opportunity to shine. It's a shame that this is the case as I'm sure that the film could've been a whole lot better if there was just a bit more character depth.

 A final point would be that this is no special film, but I won't take away from it that fact that it does have some good action sequences that are well placed in the futuristic setting. The special effects certainly live up to the current standard and most of the action scenes are fast paced, high octane and adrenaline fuelled (a few action buzz words for you there). It's just disappointing that they didn't take this film further and really develop the storyline to make an original and innovative storyline that could've made this more than just your generic Tom Cruise okay action movie.