largely refreshing and clever science fiction thriller, verging on comedy in parts

Rating: 9/10 (23 November 2014)

What makes Edge of Tomorrow arguably the best Tom Cruise starring vehicle in the past ten years - yes, I'm going that far (excluding the Mission: Impossible movies I should add) - is context. For a while, Cruise has been playing characters who just come ready-made it seems as bad-asses; Jack Reacher, the character in Oblivion, Knight & Day (that was leaning more to comedy, but the point still stands), Valkyrie. In all of these, we don't get to see much at all in the way of a transformation into him being a "bad-ass", he just is, and it's gotten tiring after a while. Then enter in Edge of Tomorrow where he plays basically a PR man for the military - a talking head - in one of those apocalyptic societies where aliens have landed and there's a battle for Earth yada-yada. He gets tricked by Brendan Bleeson's General or Colonel or whoever, and is placed right into combat. Where he dies. Because he's not fit for war. But due to a kind of alien-substance-MacGuffin device, Cruise's character ends up going back to right when he's about to enter the combat hell. And this loop continues again, and again.
What's different here? Cruise has to *become* a hero, and while this may not be something exactly new in action-sci-fi spectacle movies - certainly it's more along the lines of what you'd pick up in a screen writing class - it's refreshing for this star, especially to see Cruise have to act as the sap who is caught in a bad situation, and has little other choice but to get better (aside from, you know, the film's tagline of "Live Die Repeat"). In another way what's so absorbing is that the structure of Liman's film, taking off from a Japanese comic book, is that it's like a video game: if you go into a combat zone, you have to progress (I was thinking of one of those Metal Gear games, but I'm sure there's something closer to what it actually is in video games). You have to get to that next level and keep going to get to the final "bad guy".
The movie is short from being altogether great for the reason of the familiarity of the alien invasion dynamic - albeit the alien designs are rather extraordinary, with their spaghetti-limbs and quick pace - and the climax has more of that familiarity with what Cruise and Emily Blunt are going after to destroy that alien 'source'. But outside of that, Edge of Tomorrow is a winning picture, and the filmmakers have a lot of FUN with the premise and all of these times that Cruise has to go through this combat situation - also Bill Paxton as a scene-chewing sergeant with his platoon of metal-suited soldiers - and Blunt too. The team up works a bit better as well than some of the past Cruise vehicles (again, Reacher and Oblivion come to mind) as far as the two stars playing off each other, finding the dark comedy in these situations, and the gravity in the drama as well. When Blunt's character has to tell about how she went through this Groundhog's Day scenario before, there's weight and substance to the drama.
I have to wonder if it'll work as well on another viewing; in the theater there was a real sense of surprise to every step of the movie's logic. I imagine it will be entertaining just by the nature of the writing, and it also must be said that Liman directs the action very well. There's some of the shaky-cam crap - he was the director of the first Bourne of course - but not TOO much, and you can tell what is going on in relation to the spaces shot to shot. It's all in all a case of a star taking it just a little bit easy, and it pays off: Cruise is really appealing in the film, as he goes on this adventure, learns as he goes along, and he and Blunt get great lines to play throughout. In other words, the kind of comedy-action-drama-spectacle that gets shoveled down the world's collective throat with Transformers, but much much better, for the reasons stated.