Solidly suspenseful, funny, worth seeing

Rating: 9/10 (25 June 2014)

I'll be honest. I am not a Tom Cruise fan. Never have been. Watching him self-destruct on talk shows is riveting in an embarrassing sort of way. Having said that, he can do no wrong in this movie. Think Groundhog Day meets the Apocalypse and you have Edge of Tomorrow.
Essentially, we have a bunch of nasty aliens that have invaded the Earth, we have to find their weak spot and kill them, and Tom Cruise is the guy who does just that. How he gets to the end result is where the fun begins. Playing somewhat against the heroic type, Cruise is Major Cage, a soldier who is afraid of conflict and has never known combat. He somehow gets caught in a time loop where he is forced to go through living and getting killed and being brought back all over again until he learns the skills, gains the proper mindset, and gets it right.
There's really nothing new here, but how it's handled makes it all fresh and new somehow. Doug Liman (director) and his editor makes the learning process funny, engaging, yet they never forget to show the audience how horrible war really is--aliens or not--and the horror of it all is that Cruise's character has to submit himself to the indignity of being crushed, shot, stabbed, or mutilated in some way before he figures out what must be done.
Emily Blunt matches him every step of the way as his trainer and possible future girlfriend. The rest of the cast is excellent, the music is solid, and of course, the special effects are solid and chilling. But Cruise is really the whole show, and he more than convincingly portrays, as his name suggests, a person caught in a cage not of his own making, yet somehow develops the courage and wherewithal to break out. Worth seeing, plot holes aside.