Edge of the Source Code of Tomorrow's Adjustment Bureau

Rating: 6/10 (9 March 2017)

I so dislike Tom Cruise that when I pay attention to a character he's playing, I feel as if I've gotten my time's worth out of a movie.
I so like Emily Blunt that she could spout some dreary anti-Trump twaddle on a late-night comedy show, and I would turn off the sound and just gaze.
Doug Liman's Edge of Tomorrow gets off to such a weak start, with Cruise looking as if he lost his confidence when he heard "action" and Brendan Gleeson looking bored to tears, that I almost gave up.
But I stuck around, deciding I would give the movie a chance.
And off she went!
Cruise's character is such a spineless feather-merchant that you actually start to enjoy his discomfort-fear-loathing-confusion-panic as he gets dropped onto a beach in France to fight some sort of spider/octopus thingies, of which there are about a zillion.
He sees Blunt get killed, then gets it himself, and . . .
Wakes up where he started, at a staging area for the invasion force in England.
With some dandy editing, forgivable lapses in logic, enough true humor, and the whole concept of reliving your death so that you don't get killed, eventually, the viewer gets hooked. Deep.
And then the last reel starts, and the whole thing falls apart. It's a murky mess, with a bunch of volunteers helping Cruise and Blunt fight their way to the queen spider thingamabob (which actually looks like a spongy, electrified golf ball) to kill it. It's all so dark and confusing that the viewer wonders what the hell happened to the crisp narrative in the first two thirds.
Oh, well.
All in all, it was a good use of time. I gauge "good" by how much I'm not getting done around the house. The chores don't get done, and the movie gets above a 5. My wife gets home and wonders if I did anything, the score goes up.
I told her that the movie had Emily Blunt, and she rolled her eyes and said something unpleasant.
She doesn't like Tom Cruise either.