Groundhog D-Day

Rating: 7/10 (15 October 2019)

For a film so on-the-nose featuring a modern day Normandy Invasion against MATRIX-like robot squid aliens who have taken over central Europe, this film works surprisingly well due to its fun hard scifi premise of reliving a time period over and over again until getting things "right". It's basically a send-up of the strange reality of video games, where the key to winning is not so much based on skill, but on memorization after hours and hours of trial and error. Ever seen an amazing speed-run of Super Mario or Battletoads online and wondered what it took to get there? This movie answers your questions, depicting it with a semi-plausible real-world scenario.
The editor for the film certainly gave life to a concept that could easily become tiring. In fact, I would say this has to be one of the better-edited films I've seen in years. Things move along briskly and snappily and it was difficult to look away up until the climax of the film which unfortunately gets a little formulaic and stretchy to make things ultimately satisfying.
Emily Blunt feels miscast as some battle-hardened veteran with perfect makeup, hair, and nary a scar from all her hand-to-hand combat. Sure the film would have been more realistic to have someone like Sam Elliot in her part as a shepherding mentor character, but wouldn't have the eye candy, and let's not kid ourselves there.
Cruise does a good job playing a fish-out-of-water everyman type hero, but he's starting to get a little old to play this sort of character believably in such an action-heavy film. Action-wise, there are plenty of amazing stunts largely buried under a heavy torrent of VFX and CGI but thankfully not as obnoxiously as we've come to expect in films such as this.