Movie Review: Edge of Tomorrow
Edge of Tomorrow has a lot to recommend about it, as well as a lot of plot holes that left me frustrated, but in the end, it's a film that I was still thinking about the next day - as most good sci-fi movies should affect you. The movie is almost like a dramatic version of Groundhog Day, but with more at stake, and it was very intriguing.
Major Cage (Tom Cruise) is a PR person in the U.S. Army - meaning, he's never actually been in a battle, but goes on TV and talks about the war a lot - until, one day, he's brought to General Brigham (Brendan Gleeson) who orders him to the front, in France. He tries to run away, and the next time he wakes up he's at an army base, preparing to go into battle. He has no idea how to use his weapons or highly-technical suit, yet when he drops on to the beach in France he manages to kill one of the more important aliens, who then inadvertently transfers its time-controlling abilities onto him. He dies that day on the beach, but in the blink of an eye, "wakes up" and is where he started - at the army base. He eventually figures out that something in him has the ability to "reset the day," and he must work with Rita (Emily Blunt), the poster child for the army, who used to have the ability he has.
I was surprised that parts of this film actually were humorous - Cruise's character starts being a bit of a smart-aleck once he knows everything that's going to happen, and it's funny to see officers being slack-jawed and wondering how he knows all these things. With these types of movies, it can often be frustrating to keep resetting over and over, but with the way this film was edited, it was fine. I thought Cruise and Blunt did a good job here as well - this is Cruise's typical type of movie, but not really Blunt's, not counting The Adjustment Bureau and other dramas in which she's starred.
Yes, see this film. We saw the movie in 3D at the screening, and although it was decent, it's not necessary to see the film in 3D, in my opinion. The only issues I had with this movie are all the plot holes; I would have liked to have known why the aliens were invading in the first place, which is brushed off in a sentence or two by Cruise's character (he says something like "we don't know why they are here, but they are here now"). The ending was also something to ponder, and later I heard people comparing this movie to Source Code, which is definitely similar. I'd recommend this film for anyone who enjoys action and/or sci-fi movies, however, and it will be interested to see how it does at the box office with Cruise and Blunt in the lead roles.
Edge of Tomorrow is currently playing in theaters, and is rated PG-13 with a runtime of 113 minutes. 3.5 stars out of 5.
