Edge of Tomorrow: Review

     Tom Cruise's newest sci-fi film, Edge of Tomorrow (based on the novel called All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka (illustrated by Yoshitoshi ABe)), is definitely going to be compared to the Bill Murray starring masterpiece Groundhog Day, and rightly so- but this adds a little Saving Private Ryan and a dash of Independence Day and it's all slathered in Hollywood's strange fascination with watching Tom Cruise running.

LIVE.

     Cruise plays Major William Cage, a military PR media master with absolutely no combat experience.  He's a man who's spent his time and skills avoiding any battles and is forced into the front lines in a Normandy type battle (the similarities here are layered with meaning) despite his best efforts to evade the fight.

     The Major is stripped of rank and forced into a battle he's fully expected to die in.  But the good part of this is he winds up, through sheer luck of his first death's contact with a special type of alien blood, having to relive the day up to that moment over and over through a multitude of deaths.  Instead of Murray's light-hearted sleeping and waking, Major Cage has to die to reset the cycle- and it is used to great comedic effect here.
       The cleverness and humor of winding up in a continual loop actually serve a purpose- they show us not only his growth as a person, from the coward to capable soldier- but it also gradually reveals the plot to us (with the exception of a scientist's exposition-laden info dump).  In fact, I think the film does a wonderful job of editing the movie so it remains interesting without overdoing the repetitive nature of a time-altering story that plagues many so many other movies.

     Edge of Tomorrow's own tagline sums it up perfectly- Live. Die. Repeat.  Cage has to die over and over and over to learn.  Acclimating himself to the inevitability of death and it's necessity actually adds something special to the middle of the film.  It is funny how in this film, the typical "hero can't die" attitude is tossed aside for reveling in the repeated slaughter of him like a gruesome real life version of Wile E Coyote.  Brutal and hilarious.

DIE.

She can do more push-ups than you.

     What the movie doesn't get quite right here is taking Rita "Full Metal Bitch" Vrataski, played by Emily Blunt, and relegating her to a supporting character that once had the time-looping alien blood infection that Cage currently suffers. She is the ultimate bad-ass soldier, slaying the alien hordes as they come, but she isn't given enough time to continue with that and grow like Cage does.  As the movie progresses it feels like a forced romance blossoms where friendship or militaristic camaraderie should've been- and as for their characters, I think Vrataski should've been the lead, looking to Cage as the hardened hero, and drop the seemingly forced happy ending.  Having her in the lead role might've been more interesting, and the tacked on feel of the ending felt just a little off.  Not hugely, just enough to bother me a little.
   
REPEAT.

     It's not going to win any awards or be any kind of pinnacle of cinematic achievement.  There probably won't be any sequels, and the odds of multiple viewings aren't that high, but there's something oddly charming about this film.  I fully enjoyed it despite my qualms about the time altering from the perspective of the "Mimics" (aliens)- if you readers are as much of a time-travel movie aficionado as me, there's a few in here- including a big one at the end.
     There's a ton of action, interesting aliens, and plenty of laughs- particularly from Bill Paxton, who in my opinion has been given the best role of the movie as Master Sergeant Farell.  It's well acted, well written, and well directed- and while the film doesn't break any new grounds, Edge of Tomorrow is still an entertaining movie on it's own I'd heartily recommend it for its purely popcorn-munching fun.