Jack (Tom Cruise) is the last man standing (think Will Smith in I Am Legend) as the world ends. Again. But Jack is a sort of “Drone Whisperer” and apparently the drones don’t want to be whispered at. One wonders why these sci-fi creatures wants the last species of man dead, but they do. Afterall, he only wants to live in his little hut on the river.
But for now, Jack works under the tutelage of Sally (Melissa Leo) a woman who shouts commands from a TV screen run by Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) a British babe with a really good wardrobe considering it’s the end of the world so I’m not sure what mall she’s shopping at.
So apparently there were tsunamis and invasions and what remains of humanity is a memory reel that plays in Jack’s head. One that shows black/white shots of him over and over at the Empire State building with a woman he hopes to meet o the viewing deck. So this is the film’s attempt to get all Sleepless in Seattle romantic while feeling a bit Top Gun since Jack is always out riding in jets fighting off well…. one can’t be sure. The only remaining remnants of earth as he/we know it are a Yankees ball cap, a bobble head Elvis on his jet dashboard and a small pot of flowers that Victoria throws over their deck screaming furiously that they may be contaminated.
But if you think Victoria is difficult now, wait until Julia (Olga Kurylenko) shows up. Julia’s ship crashed and her crew is all gone. Her mission was classified but that was sixty years ago. But this is today, and today, she poses a threat to Victoria because let’s face it, when there’s one man on the planet ,and two women standing somebody is gonna get him for a Saturday night dinner date! Her dreams circle around a famous Andrew Wyeth painting…. The one of the woman dragging herself up a dry plain to her home. Well, I’ve got news for you Olga…the Metropolitan museum called….they want their painting back!
Enter Morgan Freeman as “Beech” though I’m not sure what his purpose is other than to turn the movie into a very Mad Max feel to it. In the end, while Cruise can act, one has to question, ‘wasn’t this the very movie Tom was filming when Katie Holmes left him?” I rest my case. One and a half tiaras and that’s because I wasn’t smoking something before I sat down in my theatre seat.