not just action

Rating: 7/10 (15 August 2017)

A lot of film fans deplore or criticize Tom Cruise's latest choice of roles. They all seem to be focusing on action movies, with the 55 (!) years old actor cast in roles where the ration between fights, high-speed chases and use of advance weaponry on one side and meaningful story and dialogues on the other is dangerously unbalanced in the favor of the first. His role in the 2014 'Edge of Tomorrow' apparently falls in the same category. However, the film directed by Doug Liman is much more than this. It is actually one of the smartest science-fiction films in the last few years.
Time looping is one of the most intriguing themes in science fiction, and has a huge number of variation and derived paradoxes. The authors of the script of this film have taken the idea and introduced it into a 'War of the Worlds' kind of film and actually cinematography and even the evil alien's appearances look quite similar to the one in the films inspired by H. G. Wells classic novel. What is different is that the superiority of the alien race is not based only on physical abilities but on the capability of controlling and resetting time. Luckily, at least some of the humans will be contaminated and use the trick to fight the invasion. I will stop here in order to avoid spoiling too much, with the promise that there are many more surprises, and that the solution and ending combines action and fine sci-fi.
Tom Cruise does what he best does (and likes it) in the last decade, with Emily Blunt a good and fit companion to his deeds. Well-paced action combines with smart writing for a film that needs no excuses to be liked.