We all come off the assembly line, different shape, colors and sizes, but ultimately we're still the same. That is...until we start choosing the various paths we drive down. The one red car in a line of beige. The red headed step child. The one bad apple spoiling someone's dessert. This is a benevolent celebration and a sly take down of men (both young and old) and their eternal car lust.
There's a robin noisily trying to get into my…
Oblivion is a film you may or may not remember from about 7-8 years ago. Tom Cruise is in it playing a man on a post-apocalyptic Earth. There isn’t much to know about the plot other than Cruise bombs around in a cool looking spaceship (and sometimes a futuristic motorbike) looking for damaged drones to repair. He has a partner in a high tower that helps him find these things, and in between missions he finds tchotchkes from “old Earth”…
It’s everything Blue Chips and He Got Game tried to be, yet has the swagger of Above the Rim and the big dumb heart of Hoosiers. The Sandman does not get caught watching the paint dry on this one!
I begrudgingly must admire this fiercely unironic commitment to aviation cornpone…
Yet I find it ironic that the most stunningly realistic scene is not the F/A-18E/F Super Hornets dropping their payload on unsuspecting uranium, but the scene in which Tom Cruise has sex with his pants on.
Jon Hamm’s wooden carcass reminded me of the best Mad Men quote today…
"What is happiness?
It's a moment before you need more happiness."
I anxiously await the reboot of Iron Eagle 2 and the movie version of Airwolf.
Original grade: 4 stars
Rewatch grade: 4 stars
You can look at this film in two ways:
A pseudo-indie film experiment which imploded under the weight of its slumming superstar cast....
Or you can look at it as a kick ass slow burn neo-western in which James Mangold slyly subverts and toys with the underdog Rocky persona...and then eventually celebrates the vengeful forgotten man persona of Rambo.
It would have been really interesting to see how this film would have…
