Oblivion is not perfect. Its dystopian story makes no apologies for its familiarity, echoing such films as “The Planet of the Apes,” “The Matrix,” “2001” and even “Wall-E.” And expecting the wheels not to eventually begin to fall off its pleasantly complicated, head-spinning plot (based on the director Joseph Kosinski’s graphic novel) is asking a little too much. But even given all this implausibility, “Oblivion” has the ability to haunt you visually and, with an unanticipated love story, even emotionally. Written by Karl Gajdusek and Michael DeBruyn, this is a piece of futuristic fiction intended for adults, not their children, a film in which firefights and futuristic weapons feel more like afterthoughts than reasons for being.
New York Post
Oblivion is one of those movies in which the main source of interest is simply in figuring out what’s actually going on, though when you do, your reaction is bound to be a shrug. 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.