Cruise rockets back to hit the target

Rating: Null/10 (13 June 2014)

Taken from the novel "All You Need Is Kill" by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, "Edge Of Tomorrow" is "Groundhog Day" and "Source Code" meets "Saving Private Ryan" and "Starship Troopers" with much of the structure and style of a video game. If that makes the movie sound derivative, it is - but it remixes these old elements in a flashy new style. The basic storyline is that Continental Europe has been taken over by metallic octopus things called 'mimics' that seem remarkably easy to kill one at a time but come in such numbers and farsightedness that the invasion of the French beaches by the UK-based United Defence Force fails and then fails again and then fails again ...
At the heart of the action is Tom Cruise as military PR man William Cage who - in a nice variation on his usual roles - wants nothing of this heroics thing. Whatever people say about Cruise, he is still a genuine star who carries any film in which he appears. This time, he has a strong female companion Rita Vrataski, the pin up soldier of the war, in the delightful shape of Emily Blunt who is rapidly acquiring star quality herself. She is really good and looks great dirty. The director is Doug Liman who gave us "The Bourne Identity" so the cutting is ferociously fast and furious.
It's all pretty ridiculous, with the repeated scenes and the frenetic editing verging on the irritating, but it's carried off with panache and pace and it's certainly so much better than Cruise's last sci-fi outing "Oblivion". From Cruise landing in a helicopter in the middle of London's Trafalgar Square, it looks and sounds terrific and I enjoyed it on a giant screen at the newly refurbished Empire cinema in London' Leicester Square.