April 26, 2013 -- This big budget, epic science fiction film is engaging enough most of the way through, although it does wander a bit in the final act until it finally ends up about where you thought it would following some plot twists that are mildly annoying.

The story is post-apocalyptic, with civilization destroyed, the moon blown up and the earth largely devoid of humans. The few people left are performing maintenance duties on drones and huge machines using sea water to produce power. What this power is used for isn't explained, since there seems to be nothing around that needs that much power. More on the film's many scientific blunders later.

The explanation given for this dire situation, which later proves to be untrue, is that a huge battle between humans and space aliens called “scavengers” has caused the earth and moon to be devastated. Most of humanity has moved to the moon Titan, orbiting Saturn. The drones protect the power plants and attack the few remaining Scavengers. It is Jack Harper's (played by Tom Cruise of the “Mission Impossible” movies) job to repair the damaged drones, along with his partner, Victoria (Andrea Riseborough of “Never Let Me Go”).

Victoria can't wait for their tour of duty to be over, but Jack doesn't want to go. He doesn't think it fair that humans won the war, but have to abandon their home world. He is haunted by dreams in which he sees a woman, Julia (Olga Kurylenko of “Seven Psychopaths”) in a crowd and they tour the observation deck of the Empire State Building before the war, many years ago. Then one day Jack finds a survivor of a crashed spacecraft and it turns out to be Julia, the woman of his dreams. Somehow, both of them are still young, after all these years. Something doesn't make sense here. His whole world starts to unravel as he discovers the truth.

When Jack finally learns the truth about himself and the real history about what has been going on with the earth and its people he tries to make amends and set things right. What starts out as one plot twist, turns into many plot twists, concluding with what might well be called a typical Hollywood ending, but with a twist, of course. There is no real “Statue of Liberty” moment like there is in “Planet of the Apes” because you can see all this coming long before the end.

It is not a bad story. It is actually pretty engaging, but there is a lot of meandering as you get close to the end. As you would expect from a big budget project like this, there are a lot of great special effects and impressive set pieces. There are some neat gadgets. The acting is solid by Cruise, Riseborough, Kurylenko and Morgan Freeman, who turns up near the end to play one of his stock wise old guy characters. This film rates a B. Spoilers below about problems with science and logic.

Most of this discussion involves information which reveals a little too much about the end of the movie which might spoil it for you if you haven't seen it. So be warned.

The image of the moon in fragments in the movie is way too much like a painting and not enough like a real explosion. If there was an explosion, blowing off big chunks of the moon, it would appear as depicted for only a very short time since an explosion this size is a very dynamic process. The largest piece of the moon would either be sent into a different orbit than the earth and moon, or (and this is more likely) gravity would draw it into a collision with the earth, or with the rest of the moon. All these chunks would not just sit there in space, motionless for months and years.

As I indicated in the review, the giant power plants that are using up the earth's water don't seem to have any place to send the power. It could be stored somewhere, I suppose. Some of it could be beamed into space by microwave to power the big satellite where the alien intelligence resides.

More problematic is the idea that these power plants would need to use up vast amounts of water. A fusion reactor would use only a tiny fraction of the water in the ocean, specifically, that portion of the ocean composed of the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium. Deuterium represents only 0.0312 percent of the water in the ocean, while tritium is much more rare. The actual consumption of water from such a power plant would be negligible. If the water was used for cooling, water and water vapor would still be recycled back into the environment.

In the final climax, when the alien ship is blown up, the alien intelligence cooperates in its own destruction by being incredibly stupid. Like a bad Bond villain (as mocked in the movie “The Incredibles”) it engaged in pointless monologuing while letting Jack have plenty of time to wire up the bomb and detonate it, blowing the alien ship to kingdom come.

In one scene, Jack is shot in the chest at close range by a gun. He doesn't bleed and he is relatively unhurt. Why doesn't Jack realize at this point that he is not really a human being? If he's not human, this would also mean that Jack could not be the father of the child that appears later in the movie, even though there seems to be an implication that he is the father of the child. The failure of Jack to be wounded by the bullet also doesn't square with the bloody scratches that appear on his face in the movie in another scene.

While we're at it, what is the need for human replicants at all, particularly ones who still have old memories and human emotions? Why didn't the aliens just build emotionless hunter-killer Terminator-like robots to kill off the remaining humans? The drones were built to hunt down and kill humans, but why were so few built? Surely the aliens, armed with advanced technology and all of the earth's resources, could build a lot more drones.

The incredible claim is made in the story that whole armies of replicants like Jack killed off most of the earth's humans. How could beings like Jack, thinking he himself is human, kill off so many humans without realizing that is exactly what he is doing? He isn't killing alien Scavengers, he is killing people, supposedly much like him. In the movie, Jack discovers the drones are killing people, and he is appalled. This cover story about Scavenger aliens would not hold up at all.

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