REVIEW: Edge of Tomorrow

This summer has been absolutely awash with exciting marquee titles, many of which have managed to live up the lofty hype. Godzilla provided a satisfying reboot to an ageing franchise, X-Men: Days of Future Past revived one that was circling the drain and 22 Jump Street was a worthy sequel. It doesn’t end there, Guardians of the Galaxy, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, How to Train Your Dragon 2 and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For make up a pretty exciting roster for July and August, which makes it easy to forget or even dismiss the fact that a Tom Cruise sci-fi thriller is still screening. Thing is though, Edge of Tomorrow is just as deserving of recognition as all those heavy-hitters, perhaps more.

Directed by Bourne Identity helmsman Doug Liman, the film introduces us to a war torn continental Europe beset by nasty aliens called Mimics. Cruise plays William Cage, a communications officer who lackadaisically attempts to school a world weary general (Brendon Gleeson) in PR before being told that he’s expected to participate in an all-or-nothing spearhead assault as a combatant. His attempts to weasel out of it just make things worse and he ends up being recruited into the rather embarrassing J squad, lead by Sgt. Farrell (Bill Paxton, in full on Aliens mode and clearly having the time of his life). The following morning Cage is bundled into a military exoskeleton (or jacket) and packed into a drop ship bound for a French beach (D-what?). The invasion doesn’t go well, the aliens are well prepared, Cage’s drop ship is swatted from the sky and following a brief and bloody skirmish involving the army’s foremost badass, the Angel of Verdun (Emily Blunt), the entire squad is wiped out and Cage is killed by a claymore.

Yep, fifteen minutes into the film the hero and all the main cast members are slaughtered, shortly thereafter Cage wakes up, back at the military base in London one day previous and the whole thing starts again. This is Edge of Tomorrow’s USP, Cage has the power to reset the day each time that he dies, everyone else goes back to their starting positions but Cage remembers and retains everything, making him the reluctant lynchpin of the war. Emily Blunt’s Rita turns out to be one of the only people who understands his newfound ability so the two team up to make the best use of it.

It really shouldn’t work, a stark, grey sci-fi actioner that repeats the same few days over and over? It should be tired, clichéd and aggressively dull but it is none of these things. The premise is used to brilliant effect with the numerous deaths ranging from darkly hilarious to outright disturbing (although they could have done so much more with it if they’d risked a 15 or 18 rating). A razor-sharp script penned in part by the man behind The Usual Suspects and based on the Japanese novel All You Need is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka holds the film up masterfully. The plot is unpredictable, evocative and massively entertaining and the action across the repeated period grows and evolves as the film progresses.

The finer details are also very well executed, Cruise is better than he’s been in years, falling somewhere between Jerry Maguire and Minority Report as he moves from a blustering, inexperienced asshole to a driven, contemplative soldier and Blunt plays off of him brilliantly, with only the vaguest obligatory nod towards any real love-interest (the culmination of which is very well handled). Despite the overwhelmingly grey colour palette, the effects hold up perfectly, the Mimics are a refreshingly different take on the nasty alien scheme, bursting out of the ground like a violent mass of pissed-off iron filings and the superbly designed jackets clunk and clatter or glide and pulverize depending on who might be wielding them.

The action stays varied enough to remain interesting and the ‘reset button’ angle allows for the set pieces to take on a plausible trail and error format, with Cage learning from each mistake and plotting out the best route to take. The likeness to video-game strategy is far from accidental, it reminded me of playing Halo on legendary mode, dying repeatedly until you have a tried, tested strategy for each section of the level. Of course in this case the deaths have some real consequence and it’s an impressive point in the film’s favor that you can watch Cruise and Blunt die countless times and never be desensitized to it.

Despite never losing a sense of pace or traction, the final skirmish doesn’t really feel like a big enough pay-off and the ending goes down the same route as the similar Source Code, continuing to roll after the ‘real’ ending and given us a final note that will make some moan and some just yell “Oh come on!”. I’d say that you can look past that though, this is a solid, tight action movie with a legitimately interesting set-up that it doesn’t squander, managing to remain unpredictable and breathlessly entertaining almost from beginning to end.