Edge of Tomorrow
(2014 review)

4 outta 5

Edge of Tomorrow is a fantastically zippy film which is quite an accomplishment since the story loops back in on itself yet finding something new each time.   Directed by Doug Liman (Go, The Bourne Identity) it’s a great mash-up of sci-fi, D-Day war movies, and time travel narrative bending.  Also if you’ve ever wanted to see a movie where Tom Cruise’s character dies dozens of times, this is the flick for you.

Aliens have invaded Europe!  Sent to the front lines is a military talking head cowardly wuss, William Cage (Tom Cruise), commanded by Sergeant Farrell (Bill Paxton).  Strapped into a high-tech combat suit Cage struggles and eventually dies in combat… and then he wakes up at the command base again.  Shockingly, Cage is reliving the same day over and over.  He discovers a hardened combat veteran, Rita (Emily Blunt), who has experienced the same thing.  It turns out Cage has a connection to the aliens and he can locate the source that controls them.  Rita and Cage then have to battle through the same day again and again, making small progressive steps, confronting killer alien hordes and the nasty General (Brendan Gleeson) who sent Cage into the war in the first place.  

The exact specifics of how and why Cage is stuck in a time loop is a tad awkward even by sci-fi movie standards but it’s so well done that you don’t mind.  There are a couple of neat narrative tricks employed.  A few times Cage and Rita are at a different stage the audience hasn’t seen yet but they talk about how things happened the last time; this is an economical way to imply that there are more time loops happening off screen.  We see situations again and again but the fun is in seeing the tiny variations that pop up due to Cage’s actions.   The story skips around a lot inside of the time loop, to before, middle, or after the landing battle, with lots of great editing flourishes as Cage keeps waking up.  Considering how mind-bogglingly complex the set-up is, the script keeps it surprisingly easy and fun to follow. 

There is a fantastic action in the movie.  Liman stages the siege on the enemy beach like something out of Saving Private Ryan with loud chaos exploding all around and mucho alien splatter.  One great sequence is when Cage first drops as we see literally people on fire falling from the sky around him.  The exhausting loop of Cage reliving the same battle sells the theme that he’s stuck in an unending fog of war.   What’s cool is when he starts to figure out how to anticipate catastrophic events mid-combat.   

It’s darkly amusing at the start when Cage is shocked to find he’s been sent to the front lines and he cowardly tries to escape.   Usually, Cruise in every movie is the guy who knows how to do anything so it’s fun to see him whimper.  Cage becomes a more typical Tom Cruise action hero as the flick goes on, there’s a cool, if a bit clichéd, training montage as Cage bounces back to his starting wake-up point as the grinding brutality starts to blur together.   While the character may lose some distinctiveness as he becomes more action hero-y, Cruise gets in a lot of opportunities to show Cage fraying at the edges or becoming eerily percipient at predicting the enemy’s moves.  At one point Cage dodges an angry fight with his eyes closed, looking bored and annoyed at how it always plays out. 

Cruise is the one with the most screen-time next to Blunt, who plays a haggard, world-weary solider who allows her human side to show once in awhile.  Bill Paxton is a blast as the pontificating Sergeant and it should be noted that Bill Paxton in anything makes it better (and there should be more Bill Paxton in pretty much everything).   The grunts Cage is thrown in with is a diverse bunch with distinct personalities and visual quirks, a bit cribbed from Paxton’s combat unit in Aliens.  Gleeson is solid as the grumpy General and him and Cruise share a nifty scene when Cage, stuck in the midst of the loop, talks about how their conversation has gone the same way an infinite amount of times.   There is zero explanation as to why the General has such a mad-on for Cage.  Maybe he just doesn’t like him.  

The third act of the movie isn’t as good as the meaty chunk when Cage is time travelling.  Near the end the story stops coming up with cool twists and morphs into a somewhat standard sci-fi action epic.  The closing minutes are interesting and dramatic but also can be viewed as a bit of cheat.  Even as the movie runs out of a bit of steam it’s done a hellova job for the first hour and a half.  

Edge of Tomorrow is one of the more fascinating sci-fi movies in awhile.   It’s somewhat remarkable how it continually juggles the same basic set of scenes and keeps it fresh.  This is an awesome ride that shakes you up.  A lot.  And then it does it again.  And again.   And again.