It’s great to see that Tom Cruise can still surprise us, and that’s exactly what he does in the new sci-fi action mind bender Edge of Tomorrow. Breaking away from his own Cruise-esque archetypes, your Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, Ethan Hunt, or even the brooding bombast of Stacee Jaxx, decades into his career of event films he manages to carve out a new notch with his refresfshing choice to take on Major William Cage, plus let’s not leave out that the movie is pretty damn good to boot.
Cruise will always be Tom Cruise, he still exudes Hollywood A-List movie star and, whether they hit or miss, his movies rarely fly under the radar. It’s somewhat surprising to see him hit the sci-fi well so soon after his big screen stumble with the high concept Oblivion, which dazzled visually but took a massive narrative nose dive when it tried too hard to deliver a high concept ending that left moviegoers both befuddled and less than satisfied.
In Edge of Tomorrow, we learn Earth has been invaded by an alien force, dubbed Mimics. These dervish like creatures have already laid waste to Europe through unrelenting assaults and are gaining ground every day. Turns out these creatures are highly adaptable and seemingly unbeatable.Whenever they suffer a setback on the battle front, they can reset time back a day to become properly prepared for the enemy strike.
Cruise plays Major William Cage, a smug military Public Relations officer who hasn’t spent a single day in the battle trenches. That changes when he is suddenly drafted to fight in Operation Downfall, a Normandy-worthy sneak attack that promises humanity a victory, but nonetheless many human casualties despite a new hi-tech exo-armor developed by the military. After unsuccessfully trying to jump ship, he finds himself forced into boot camp hell and assigned to J Squad for one day of training under the command of a drill Sergeant Farrell (Bill Paxton), who’s from the Kentucky school of hard knocks.
Terrified and completely unqualified for battle of any sort, Cage is killed within minutes of being dropped into the thick it. Right before his demise though, he is drenched in Mimic blood, and suddenly wakes up earlier in the day at boot camp again. He realizes he is caught in a time loop, living the same day over and over again. Each day he gains more experience as a soldier and comes closer to finding a way to defeat the Mimics, whether he moves only one step to the right on the battle field, or takes a different slight pause before advancing. But he inevitably gets killed over and over again. By teaming up with Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), a newly crowned war hero dubbed the “Angel of Verdun” who also once had the power to live through a cycle of reset days, he forges forward little by little, day by repeated day, in hopes of finally reaching ultimate victory.
Directed by Doug Liman and based on the Japanese novel All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, I found Edge of Tomorrow to be more in line with 2011’s underrated Source Code than the only-on-the-surface similar Groundhog Day. The 1993 Bill Murray comedy classic shares DNA with this film in the most basic of plot elements where your main character is doomed to live and over a single day in his life, moving forward in a better scenario through trial and error. Death was not involved and there was no actual explanation for any of it in Groundhog Day. In director Duncan Jones’ Source Code, the main character had to die to repeat the day and the dark sci-fi tone is more in line with Edge of Tomorrow.
The visceral battle scenes on devastated battle grounds are well shot, and their execution presented IMAX are pretty spectacular to behold. Though when it comes to the brains of the film, which it has in abundance as well, it’s strongest when you don’t know how far along Cage is ahead of you. Sometimes you are with him as he advances to an as of yet unexplored part of the cycle, but other times it’s revealed he’s actually days ahead of not only the other people in the movie, but also us people watching the movie. The back and forth of that alone thankfully refreshes the redundancy of seeing parts of the film played over and over again. It also begs the question of how long Cage has been caught in the loop? How many days has he lived over and over again, gaining ground little by little? Weeks? Years? How many times has he experienced death, which for most people once is enough.
The concept of death here becomes incredibly superficial since moving the plot forward depends on Cage’s countless demises. Typically your lead character never dies, but here knocking Cage off becomes a running joke to a certain degree. Cage learns to overcome any fear of dying, no matter how gruesome the ending entails. At points he’s even OK with frivolously taking bullets to the head when he is only slightly wounded during training marches. Again, everything depends on the day being reset so he can get closer to perfecting the plan for victory.
Watching Cruise effectively play the coward at the outset of the film really helps set the stage for everything that is to come. As Cage is slowly forced to grow a set of balls and build up skills just to survive sometimes a mere minute longer before the day resets allows the film to take this time loop concept and make it all its own. He becomes a proficient warrior alongside Blunt’s gutsy Rita, and although typically they are mismatched for story like this, the undetermined length of the film’s time frame makes their relationship work.
The film is a spectacular IMAX experience. I’m a stickler for grainy IMAX blow ups, and the presentation in full IMAX 3D looked stunning. Not all things are meant to be converted to IMAX 3D and look this good, but Edge of Tomorrow is a rare exception. If you see it, see it big.
There is more than enough spectacular high octane spectacle and visual effects to keep action and sci-fi fans thrilled. It’s not to say Tom Cruise is back, but he’s definitely back on track with his solid performance in Edge of Tomorrow, and helps balance it out as an unexpected thought provoking summer must-see.
Edge of Tomorrow opens in theaters and IMAX 3D on June 6th.
REVIEW RATING: ★★★★★
Director: Doug Liman
Starring: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton, Brendan Gleeson
Screenwriters: Christopher McQuarrie, Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth
Studio: Warner Bros.
Rated: PG-13
Running Time: 113 minutes
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