Damn! damn! damn! Tom Cruise does it again!

Rating: 10/10 (25 September 2014)

How does Tom Cruise do it? Vanilla Sky, Minority Report, The Last Samurai, War of the Worlds, Oblivion and now Edge of Tomorrow. I've had a begrudging admiration for him since I saw him Top Gun which I thought was cheesier than Wotsits. Yet here he is in a belter of a movie, producing a well crafted, believable Cage character with wonderful acting that maps out the transformation from slimy coward to purposeful soldier and finally to deserving hero, with emotion and even comic timing when needed, all the while utilising his obvious talent and boyish good looks to great effect; he makes me sick! Ahem, anyway the story is intelligent, well directed and edited. The acting is marvellous, especially Emily Blunt and Bill Paxton. The production is quality, although I would have liked to have seen slower CGI sequences of the aliens in order to appreciate them more in detail. The plot twists are cleverly implemented with lack of prediction and dark humour is nicely woven into what is a story of catastrophe for the human race. Each temporal cycle is a sub-plot of its own that links nicely into the main story, even if the characters reach a practical dead end. The viewer is not spoon fed the story artefacts, so I found delight in speculating where the next cycle would lead. As a scifi fan, for me this is another glorious example of visual storytelling and I can't recommend it enough.