Director: Joseph Kosinski
Year Released: 2013
Rating: 2.0
A technician (Tom Cruise) and his lover/partner (Andrea Riseborough) work in union to repair drones patrolling a post-apocalyptic Planet Earth until strange memories start flooding back into the technician's head and he has a run-in with a group of land dwellers (led by Morgan Freeman) who suggest his concept of 'reality' is, in fact, terribly skewed. Basically a poor amalgamation of other, better sci-fi movies Kosinski already saw and reprocessed (including Kubrick's 2001 and, more recently, Duncan Jones' Moon) - the result is, for the most part, dramatically inert, with the sole inspiration coming in the form of a wonderfully filmed Earth-in-Ruin (Life of Pi cinematographer Claudio Miranda earns his paycheck once again) and a sticky-sweet ending that allows Cruise to be All Things to All People: saving the planet from a triangular menace, reuniting with his lover, being a father, owning a cozy cottage by a lake with a decent vinyl collection. Is there anything he can't do ... other than make movies in which there's nothing he can't do?
