Don't let the terrible trailer fool you

Rating: 8/10 (16 June 2014)

Cage (Cruise) is put on a suicide mission to defend the planet from an invading race of aliens. Before dying on the beaches of Normandy with the rest of mankinds soldiers he is caught in a time loop where he will "respawn" in England the day before the last desperate human attack on Normandy takes place.
It is a pleasure to finally see Tom Cruise back in form in Edge of Tomorrow. Following a streak of mediocre sci-fi movies Cruise finally showed audiences why he is still considered one of the absolute top leading men in modern cinema. He certainly brings his A-game to the movie with an enthusiasm that we haven't really seen since Tropic Thunder, in a less tenacious but much more determined and unassuming fashion. He got great help from rising-star Emily Blunt who was sensationally stunning as the hard-hearted officer and Angel of Verdun. The chemistry between the two is what essentially sells the movie (together with tons of CGI and of course alien robots) and they sell it well. The repeated first-meetings between the two never gets old, we always want to see if Cage can somehow manage the fiery Rita better than last time.
The film is functioning extremely well in the ever-growing grey-area between film and video game. We feel a close connection to Cage because we are the only ones that know and can identify what he is going through. It is always a movies job to make the audience identify with the protagonist, and Edge of Tomorrow does so effortlessly and elegant. The structure takes us on a unique journey with Cage were we follow him every time he has to reset and we feel his distress when he got close before he was reset.
Fans of difficult campaigns in the FPS gaming genre will find the elements reset and restart very familiar as the whole aspect of "move forward, die, move a little further, die, etc.etc.etc.) Is almost always very prevalent in that genre. This is all exemplified and enhanced by the short exchange between Cage and Rita - "What do we do now?" "I don't know, we have never gotten this far". As opposed to "Gamer" this works out very well for Edge and the audience never feels let out of the action and the storyline is much easier to follow than the grossly mismatched trailer might let you to believe.