An actually intelligent action movie with good acting... a pleasant surprise

Rating: 8/10 (25 October 2014)

I'll admit it. I did not have high hopes for this movie. Based on the trailer, I thought it would just be some mindless explosion movie. I was pleasantly surprised when it proved me wrong. I think the actors did very good jobs portraying all of the parts, the plot twists actually tend to be pretty surprising (except for the ending- that was pretty predictable), and there weren't so many explosions or shaky camera that you couldn't tell who is dying and who is killing who. Overall, I think it was an excellent movie. Now, onto the couple flaws. First off, it's main idea is a complete and total ripoff of Groundhog Day (another excellent movie). It changed it enough to be original, so I'm not too mad. Second, they made it blatantly obvious that Cage was going to get a blood transfusion at some terribly inconvenient time, so that is another "twist" that most people saw coming. And third, everybody's heroic sacrifices kind of lose their meaning when legitimately everybody survives. Overall though, I think it was a great action movie with a good story and character development, not some Transformer-esqe explosion fest.