"Oblivion" was described to me as a film it was probably best to go into with exceedingly low expectations. I didn't hear anyone classify it as particularly bad, so to speak, but the general consensus was that it was of a distinctly middling quality. Although I'm assuming a good number of those lukewarm opinions were most likely tainted by the fact that the film is a Tom Cruise vehicle, which I'd estimate alienates roughly half the general population right there. If there is one actor more polarizing than Nicolas Cage, it's Tom Cruise. People are all about not liking Tom Cruise just because. They seldom have a good reason. They just don't like him. Fair enough, I guess.
Since I don't have a particular problem with Tom Cruise and am of the opinion that he's an alright actor most of the time, "Oblivion" seemed an attractive sci-fi outing to spend an afternoon watching. And while it's difficult to imagine anyone ever watching it twice or even owning it just because, I did get a decent two hours of entertainment out of it. But man am I glad I waited to rent it. Had I spent $9 to see it in theaters I would have been slightly annoyed.
That's some war face you got there, Tom. It's the same look I get when I scratch the cue-ball.
"Oblivion" begins with a tepidly read bit of exposition by Jack Harper (Tom Cruise), a repairman who is one of the last people left on Earth in the aftermath of an alien war which we won, but ended up devastating the planet. His task is to maintain the drones that protect these giant machines which provide the power to send humanity to Saturn's moon, Titan, which is their new home since Earth is an irradiated wasteland now. The remnants of the invading alien forces are still around and attack the machines all the time, so there needs to be constant surveillance so that humanity can reach Titan and survive.
At least, that's what Jack's been told. It comes as no surprise, given the genre and broad stroke non-description of the talking head authority figure, Sally (Melissa Leo), that there's going to be a twist at some point which will "challenge everything he knows" and all that good stuff. In addition, the amount of obvious obfuscation going on regarding anything outside of Jack and his partner Victoria's (Andrea Riseborough) little bubble on top of their giant tower practically screams out that at some point we're going to find out left is right, up is down, good is bad and any other kind of tropes which would be fine had they not been done thousands of times before.
"What would you say, Mr. Cruise, if I told you that everything you knew was a lie?"
"I'd say I was a government official in a post-apocalyptic setting."
Shock of all shocks, that's exactly what happens. From a plot standpoint, this is one of the most cliched, uninspired, saw-it-coming-15-seconds-in films I've seen in quite some time. If you've seen any amount of science fiction films in your life, "Oblivion" will be like an odd mix-and-match of around a half dozen of them. There is absolutely nothing about it which warrants any kind of praise when it comes to originality.
That being said, there are movies that do cliched well, and movies that do cliched poorly. And you know what? "Oblivion" did it well. It did it damn well, in fact. The story is going to throw you for about as many loops as are in a bowl of Count Chocula, but it takes real skill to make a film that is very familiar like this not boring. And I must admit to finding "Oblivion" surprisingly entertaining considering how much I felt like a psychic while watching it.
This is an absolutely gorgeous film, which isn't surprising considering that it's directed by Joseph Kosinski, who made the world's most beautiful two-hour long Daft Punk music video with "Tron: Legacy." This time he's dealing with a more realistic looking setting, so in that respect I actually think "Oblivion" looks better than "Tron: Legacy." It's a better movie, too, but that's not that difficult of a feat to pull off. I especially liked the subtlety of the CGI, with the huge machines in the sky barely poking through the distant haze almost like an afterthought being one of the more effective and economic ways of keeping the viewer grounded in the setting I've seen in some time. I'm not going to say that alone makes "Oblivion" worth the sit, but that's one more factor in keeping you entertained and distracting you when they rip off "Moon" and the end of "Independence Day."
Did I mention it's pretty?
As far as acting goes, to be honest this isn't one of Tom Cruise's better efforts. He has moments when he's alright but generally speaking he's kind of bland and sleepwalks through it. The same goes for Olga Kurylenko playing his main love interest. This is more a fault of the writing, since they really don't have any chemistry together at all besides the fact that the script tells us they do. It's pretty bad. On the other hand Andrea Riseborough was actually pretty damn good and gives what is by far the most believable performance of the movie.
The biggest fault with the casting was not Cruise's blandness nor the fact that Morgen Freeman is in it for all of 15 minutes total, but that Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Zoë Bell are given meaningless and do-nothing roles. And it's especially irritating to see the day saved by I'm-not-too-into-it Tom Cruise when The Bride's stunt-double and Jamie freaking Lannister are in the next room polishing their guns and just waiting to kick some ass.
"Sir. Seriously. Two swords. Give us two swords. We will end this in like an hour."
All that being said, "Oblivion" is fine. It's just fine. The end product is better than it looked in the trailer, but it's pretty safe and familiar sci-fi. It may be a product of many different parts from many other films, and it may not be bigger than the sum of those parts, but trust me when I say it could have gone down a lot worse. At least this is competent film making.
Check out the trailer!
THE BOTTOM LINE - "Oblivion" isn't going to win awards for originality, but it's a well made, familiar sci-fi movie that looks very pretty and does what it does well. If you're okay with Tom Cruise this is worth a watch. Just keep your expectations somewhat tempered and you'll be fine.
Clearly the Movie Gods are reasonably appeased. In the time since the burst hemorrhoid that was "A Good Day to Die Hard" sloshed it's reeking mass through theaters a little more than a month ago, I may or may not have offered up a blood sacrifice. I'm not saying I did, but I could have. Had I done so, it would have been in exchange for their mercy and benevolence by giving us a film that could, at least in some small way, compensate for the death of one of the greatest action franchises of all time.
I'm not saying that "Olympus Has Fallen" was of the quality of the classic "Die Hard" films, but you can at least imagine in your mind that this would have been an alright one had it stared Bruce Willis. It's like the chintzy coffee mug your work may give you in exchange for cleaning the bathroom floors with your face for 15 hours on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. It's not really much of anything, and far too little too late after something nightmarishly horrible but hey, it's something.
So, to whatever dark deity accepted whatever sacrifice I may have hypothetically made, I offer my thanks. Be sure to leave your business card so I can properly worship you in the future. But next time do you think you could perhaps manage to do a little bit more than remake "Air Force One?" It's just going to make me want to watch "Air Force One" again. Not "Olympus Has Fallen." Hell, you even ripped off scenes like the "shooting the secretary" bit. I feel like I'm already watching "Air Force One," but without the awesomeness of Harrison Ford.
It is more subtle, though.
I realize that it may sound like I'm coming down too harshly on "Olympus Has Fallen." I don't want to make that impression, because this isn't a particularly bad movie by any means. As far as ridiculous, patriotic chest-thumping action movies go, it was fine. I've seen it done worse, although as one could infer from the previous paragraph, I've also seen it done better. At least I've seen it done with a far more memorable villain, which counts for a lot. But that's getting ahead of ourselves.
"Olympus Has Fallen" follows Mike (Gerard Butler), a former Secret Service agent who is forced to single-handedly save the President (Aaron Eckhart) and therefore the world after the White House comes under attack by North Korean insurgents. Of course there is hostage taking, executions, frantic conference calls as generals try to get some GODDAMN ANSWERS, torn American flags flapping in the wind, nuclear missiles, some one-liners, and all the other things we except from a movie like this involved. It's all pretty by the books, which doesn't make it bad, but as one could probably tell by looking at the poster, this most certainly is a movie that feels like it belongs in the late 90's.
"Happy birthday, Mr. President..."
And as much as that may sound like a slam, 90's action movies were awesome, so there's no issue there. By all means, remind me of something staring John Travolta or Christian Slater or Nicolas Cage. I will not complain. Hell, "Olympus Has Fallen" would actually make a decent double feature with something like "Under Siege" or maybe "Broken Arrow." Hell, even "Crimson Tide" would be a nice pairing.
Once the film gets going with the ridiculous plot, which gives "Red Dawn" a run for its money in terms of "That's dumb," bullets are flying and things are exploding with such rapidity that it almost overrides the fact that none of what we're seeing makes any sense or could feasibly happen. But really, in a movie like this when it's one man against an army of terrorists, there does come a certain point when logic does have to take a back seat to entertainment. After all, that's why we invented Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Just what part of "I'm going to shoot down this jet with a pistol" is problematic to you?
The action is acceptably frantic and reasonably well-shot, although it does suffer a bit from our old friend shakycam - The bane of the modern action film. And it may have just been the theater I saw it at (I'm looking at you, Emagine Canton) but the movie also seemed exceedingly dark, making it difficult to follow, particularly when about 3/4's of the movie takes place at dusk or night in a building with the power cut. So that was fun. But I can't deny that it was action packed, and I was never bored.
But for as much as the action counts, films like "Olympus Has Fallen" really depend on the charisma of their star, and while Gerard Butler isn't fantastic, he's not bad. He's just not that great. He certainly has the badass factor down pretty solidly, but for some reason the extra oomph to push him into full blown action movie star isn't there. Butler kind of falls in a weird place for me, being that he's like Jeremy Renner without the charm or Karl Urban without the acting chops. And though even a watered-down version of Renner or Urban is still good, after a while it does become a bit noticeable. And for me, I just start wishing that either one of those guys were in the movie instead.
I can't be the only one to be annoyed by his face, can I?
In a smart move, the film surrounds Butler with some heavyweights in the acting department, including not only Aaron Eckhart and Cole Hauser but also Morgen Freeman and even freaking Robert Forster. And while they barely (if ever) have any direct contact with Butler, he's talking to them for a good chunk of the film. Unfortunately we also have Angela Bassett sitting in the same room as Freeman and Forster sucking some of the talent out, but it still works as long as she's not talking. But one wonders what they're doing when they have not only a great actress like Ashley Judd in the film for just the first 15 minutes, but also Radha Mitchell, who has a do-nothing part we barely see her in. For shame.
I only have four complaints about "Olympus Has Fallen" that really irked me enough to really stand out. Everything else was an acceptable action movie pâté which was enough to satisfy my post-"Die Hard 5" malaise. Does that sound like a good time? Then I say go for it. You could do far worse. But me being me, I gotta vent. Here goes.
The first one is an admittedly minor complaint, made even less so by the fact that I got a pretty good laugh out of it. I found Melissa Leo's character, the Secretary of Defense, to be borderline unwatchable. I think they were trying to go for a tough Hillery Clinton type (unsurprisingly) but Leo plays it with such teeth-clenched, steel-jawed machismo that it's a bit much. But it gets ridiculous after she gets the patriotic snot beat out of her by the villain, and gets dragged away to what she assumes will be her death. As this is happening she starts belting out the Pledge of Allegiance through her broken mouth at the top of her lungs. While this is obviously meant to be stirring and resolute, I couldn't help myself and had to laugh, since due to her slurred and half-conscious speaking she sounded less like a patriot bravely meeting their end and more like Calamity Jane from "Deadwood" on another one of her bourbon fueled rampages.
"AH PLESH AHLEEJANCE TO DA FWAGADA YOONITID STaate...ah HELL! I pished mahself 'gain!"
The second issue I took was that for as much as this is supposed to be an "America! Yeah!" movie, it sure does love to make our army, air force, police force, NORAD, secret service, and overall level of preparedness look really, really bad. I know the whole point of the film is that Gerard Butler is forced to save the day, but there is a serious lack of any kind of general competence going on with everyone else. During the initial attack the only thing the men guarding the White House seem willing to do is discourage the enemy by dying at them.
You know, I'm no military strategist. I'm not a genius when it comes to tactics. The best battleplan I usually manage to come up with in D&D is "The fighter hits it with his sword." I won every battle in StarCraft by building 12 of the biggest air units available and pounding the other side into the dirt from above. But were I put in a situation where I had a large, massed group of enemies advancing towards me over open ground, and I was standing outside a heavily fortified building with numerous places to hide and to take cover, I can tell you without equivocation that my first instinct would NOT be: "Stand out in the open so the enemy can clearly see and shoot you."
"Quickly men! Stop the bullets with your bodies! Forth, Eorlingas!"
I know it's a convention of the action movie, wherein the bad guys need to appear as a viable threat, but for the love of Crom, the secret service looses roughly 80% of their strength before they even think that perhaps, just maybe it might be a good idea to duck behind a pillar or something or simply GO INSIDE. It doesn't make the terrorists look scary so much as it makes the Americans look really dumb.
Speaking of dumb, there's a pretty hackneyed twist in "Olympus Has Fallen" involving Dylan McDermott's secret service agent revealing himself as a traitor who was helping the North Koreans the whole time. And like usual in these films, his reasons for doing so are never explained more than a silly little "America is bad!" speech. It's just like Xander Berkley in, again, "Air Force One." And it was stupid then, too. I've never liked the plot device of a traitor in the midst of a ridiculously selective group of elite soldiers. I can never figure out how nobody figured him out, and why he's secret service anyway when he was capable of turning heel to the point of blowing up the United States. Which is the place where he lives. It's where he keeps all his stuff.
Oh geez, look out everyone. Bobby Donnell is locked and loaded.
And lastly the villain Kang, played by Rick Yune, just wasn't up to par when it comes to baddies in movies like this. This kind of movie needs a Gary Oldman. A Christopher Walken. A Dennis Hopper. I'm not saying that Rick Yune is bad, but he's not up to the task of being an intimidating villain, at least as the character is written. He's not memorable, he doesn't actually do much, and he's not any fun to watch.
"Nice suit. John Philips, London. I have two myself."
He doesn't say anything clever. He's not intimidating physically aside from some random kung-fu he pulls out of nowhere, and he doesn't really do anything besides beating up an older women and a dude who is cuffed at the wrists. And his big fallback plan is to hide after sacrificing the rest of his men. Norman Stansfield he is not. He's just a weasellyscumbag who isn't any fun. That's honestly the biggest problem, as I am of the firm belief that the quality of an action movie is directly proportional to how entertaining the villain is.
Don't believe me? Think back on "Die Hard" and "Die Hard With A Vengeance." Alan Rickman and Jeremy Irons were great, right? Now quick. Without checking IMDB, who was the villain in "Die Hard 2: Die Harder?" What about "Live Free or Die Hard?" How about "A Good Day to Die Hard?" What? You don't remember? Hmm. I do wonder how those movies stack up against the other two.
I rest my case.
Check out the trailer. What you see is pretty much exactly what you get.
THE BOTTOM LINE - "Olympus Has Fallen" is alright. Just alright. I've seen way worse action films, and for a hybrid of "Die Hard" meets "24" meets paranoid right-wing gun nut conspiracy theory 'MERICA! propaganda, it's serviceable. I'm just surprised it wasn't made 15 years ago. Well, it was. Several times, but you know what I mean. It's worth a rental at least, if you're feeling the urge for bloodshed.
