Big budget done mostly right

Rating: 7/10 (11 September 2014)

There's a scene in Edge of Tomorrow where people in a pub are talking about the possible motivations of the antagonist alien species might be, Tom Cruise responds to this by saying "what difference does it make?". This is obviously meant to be interepreted as a matter of factly statement about the business of fighting for your survival but I can't help but feel it's also a line put in there by the screenwriters addressed to the audience in which they're trying to tell you not to worry about the nitty gritty of plot details in a movie featuring time travel as its premise.
And of course, getting past the fact that time travel as a plot device doesn't hold up to any form of reasoned scrutiny it has to be said that what Edge of Tomorrow manages to do with this conceit is really enjoyable to behold. Bar a couple really tired clichés, the basic elements of plot progression and character interaction come together really nicely here. Pretty much my only major complaints about this film are the generic and utterly uninteresting enemies, a retread of the tired old mothership ending that grants our heroes an automatic victory upon its destruction, sorely lacking audio production and a miscast Brendan Gleeson who's completely out of place as a stern faced general (I have never seen him pull off a stern face).
It's fantastic too that practical effects are used to such a great degree and when CGI appears it rarely stands out.