When director Sydney Pollack was promoting his new film ‘The Firm’ back in 1993, an interviewer asked him what his leading man’s best attributes were. Pollack famously replied “Nobody runs quite like Tom” And he wasn’t wrong, twenty years later Tom is still running and for a man of fifty he’s in remarkably good shape; he probably has a painting stored in the attic.

In Oblivion Cruise plays Jack Harper one of the few remaining humans left on the planet after an Alien invasion 60 years earlier. The good news is that we (or more to the point America) won the war. The bad news is that “The God Damn crazy maniacs” nuked our own planet to defeat the invaders, leaving the place in a pretty bad state. Earths survivors were shipped out to build a brave new world on Titan, one of Saturn’s moons.

Ex-marine commander Harper is employed by the Corporation as a mechanic to repair the flying sphere like robot drones. The drones are programmed to patrol the wastelands and guard the large machines that hover above the surface extracting the remaining resources that the Earth has to offer. Their other job is to eliminate (with Robocop machine gun cannons) the few Alien creatures called Scavs that were left behind and sabotage the machinery when they can.

Jack is teamed up with a female partner Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) who carries out the data management while communicating with their supervisor Sally (Melissa Leo) via a video link. Sally ends each correspondence in a broad Texas drawl “Are you and Jack an effective team?” while smiling like a crazed Stepford wife. The intimate pair live on a floating platform thousands of feet in the sky, equipped with all mod-cons including a glass bottomed swimming pool.

When Jack’s not patrolling in his flying bug pod he’s zooming across the barren landscape on his futuristic motor bike, which actually has no real function except to let Tom Cruise show off his motorcycling prowess. Apparently the Producer let Tom keep the bike after filming was complete. In amongst the apocalyptic landscape Jack discovers an oasis where plants still grow and he can find solace with a box of some old LPs that he found (for the younger generation it’s like a CD but bigger), Jack flicks through some classic albums and chooses Led Zepplin’s Ramble On. It’s nice to think that even in the future the old school rock bands are the number one cool choice.

With only a couple of weeks left of their tour of duty Jack is confronted by a rebel band of humans lead by Beech (Morgan Freeman) who have survived by retreating underground and Jack is forced to re-evaluate everything he was taught about the Alien invasion and its aftermath. Jack is also haunted by memories of a mysterious woman called Julia (Bond girl Olga Kurylenko) and in his dreams he appeared to have had a relationship with her in old New York 60 years ago. Nothing is quite what it seems.

The film is written and directed by Joseph Kosinski and was based on his Graphic Novel of the same name. The shots of the Earth’s battered landscape are visually stunning and we are teased with the odd recognisable New York landmark buildings half buried in the sand.

Tom Cruise gives 100% in his performance and takes it all very seriously and I think he was the right choice for the role as he makes you care for Jack. There is a very tense scene where Jack is searching for a missing drone and lowers himself on a wire into a cave and finds he’s not alone.

However, there are also a few scenes where you start to fidget a little bit as the film spreads over the two hour mark and we get the feeling that this is all looking very familiar. In fact the film seems to have taken its storyline from a number of other sci-fi movies such as the not so well known but brilliant low budget ‘Moon’, to the more mainstream movies like ‘The Matrix’. ‘The Island’, ‘Independence Day’ and ‘Planet of the Apes’. It’s also a shame that the Morgan Freeman character Beech is so underdeveloped and hardly has any screen time. Another actor that is underused is Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Beech’s second in command Sykes. Last seen as the nasty Jaime Lannister in Game of Thrones.

On the more positive side the film does look incredible but then again I did see the screening at the BFI IMAX and if you are a fan of Tom Cruise then you’re going to love this. I’m sure it will be a hit at the box office.

Three out of five stars.

In cinemas now.

Certificate 12A.