Groundhog Day with Guns

Rating: 8/10 (10 June 2014)

This is one of those movies that as I was watching it I was finding it a little hard to get into it however after walking away from it I began to appreciate it a lot more and am on the verge of suggesting that it, so far, is one of the best films that I have seen this year (particularly since many of the other ones have simply been a part of a long running series). As I was watching it I was thinking of giving it a 4/10 however I have now definitely settled on an 8 because, well, I guess I am really glad that I saw it and really would like to see it again.
The thing about this movie is that you can pretty much work out what it is about by watching the trailer, and as such there are actually not all that many surprises when you end up watching it. Maybe that is why I was so hoo-hum about it, because I knew what to expect and I got what I expected, and little more. Okay, I was really keen on seeing it as I approach it, and am really glad that I saw it now, however maybe it was because I went into the film anticipating huge things when in the end I simply got what I expected, or maybe it was just that the aliens were not as good as they could have been (though even now I think that they were actually pretty good).
There isn't really all that much that I can say beyond that because, well, everything that I can say about this film, about living the same day over and over again, caught in an endless cycle, I have probably already said in Groundhog Day. The difference is that Groundhog Day does not have marauding aliens, a massive battle scene over a beach that could be (but may not be) Normandy, and Tom Cruise running around an an exo-skeleton (or should I say Bill Murray). However, one could consider that the whole idea of 'Live, Die, Repeat' is that we, as humans, are doomed to continue to live in an endless cycle, being brought back to that point because we do not see how we can escape. Maybe the whole idea of the battle at Normandy is a warning that war is not necessarily going to go away, and if we remain stubborn and refuse to listen to reason (as the army does in this film) then we are only going to find ourselves back at that point again, storming the beaches of Normandy against another enemy that does not necessarily have a face, and returning to Paris to liberate it again (or to once again blow up that dam that the dambusters blew up).