Very entertaining sci-fi flick

Rating: 8/10 (26 June 2014)

Very entertaining sci-fi flick. Starts on a slightly dodgy premise though. Basically, from out of nowhere Tom cruise's military Major is forced to fight in the front line of a major offensive against alien invaders. Even though he is a high ranking soldier who seems to have all but retired from duty in the field. He apparently has little to no active duty under his belt, at least not recently. And seems very very reticent about returning to combat. He even tries to blackmail the General to get out of it, who then attempts to arrest him but not before Cruise makes a run for it before being tazered and waking up handcuffed on an army base. All very implausible! But we can forgive and forget this as it sets us up for his recurring nightmare.
As you can expect Cruise's foray into onto the battlefield is disastrous and grizzly and he and many others die. Cruise is very fortunate though. He manages to luck into a very unique event which allows him to relive the previous 24 hours every time he dies. And he dies a lot, but each recurring day he lives he manages to learn a bit more and become more adept at staying alive during the battle.
Cruise joins forces with Emily Blunt's kick ass, sword wielding 'full metal bitch', a highly decorated war veteran. Blunts character had the same ability to relive her last 24 hours before death but has now lost it. Together they work together learning from Cruise's accumulated experiences to forge a plan to pinpoint the alien brain hiding somewhere in continental Europe!
Cruise slowly begins to get to know Blunt over the many recurring days they spend together. From Blunts point of view however she has only just met Cruise. Cruise of course falls in love but its believable (who wouldn't fall in love with her) and poignant, as it seems hopeless and doomed, the odds of survival seem insurmountable.
The journey of Cruise from inept coward to kick ass braveheart is believable and satisfying. The actions scenes are dirty and gritty and done in a realistic way, harrowing and tense. The aliens are sort of like the squiddies from the matrix only much faster and with more moving parts. Sort of like metallic shape shifting octopi. They do their menacing job well. Deadly and uncommunicative. Very unlike anything humans can understand or compare to.
The ending is a little Hollywood i.e. inexplicably everything turns out rosy for everyone, but without much explanation as to how. More time travel twistyness is afoot but there is no logical explanation as to why cruise appears to wake up days before anyone dies and the enemy defeated. Ah well, I cant say that it really annoyed me that much. Just left me scratching my head slightly. All in all a lot of fun.