The following is a review of the new film, Edge of Tomorrow. It will definitely contain spoilers, so you have been warned. If you don't want to be spoiled, you should really turn back now, because you really need to see this movie. If, you don't care if you're spoiled, or you like to be spoiled, because you know, some people do, then please continue...
**********SPOILER ALERT!!!!!**********
Now, I am not a Tom Cruise fan. Before this weekend, I believe the last Tom Cruise film that I had seen was Tropic Thunder. Yes, it was that long ago. And honestly, until Kristian Harloff and Mark Ellis over at www.schmoesknow.com highly recommended this movie, I had no intention of seeing it. And that would have been a terrible shame.
Edge of Tomorrow, based on the Japanese novel, All You Need Is Kill, tells the story of Major William Cage (Tom Cruise), an officer of the United States Military and spokesperson for the United Defence Forces, a NATO military outfit created to fight the escalating war with the alien race known as the Mimics, who have taken refuge on the planet and are attempting to destroy the human race. Through a series of unfortunate events, Major Cage finds himself among the first wave of soldiers on the eve of battle, even though he is not a combat trained soldier. Stripped of his rank and branded a deserter, he is placed in J-Unit, a group of misfits, not really fit to be soldiers in the eyes of those higher up. Although the attack was supposed to be a covert one, somehow the enemy knows that they are coming and the soldiers are ambushed. Cage stumbles around the battlefield, watching as everyone around him is slaughtered by the aliens. Just as he's about to be killed by a Mimic, he deploys an explosive, killing both the alien and himself in the process, in a rather gruesome fashion. And then he wakes up. He finds himself once again, at the Heathrow Airport base, the day before the invasion is set to begin. He tries to explain the situation to anyone who will listen, but is written off as crazy and just trying to get out of combat. The invasion happens again, and every time he dies, the day somehow resets and he finds himself waking up on the same morning, before the invasion, over and over again. He has somehow gotten himself in a time-loop and has no idea how to get out of it. When he saves Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), and lets it slip that he's been here before, she tells him that when he wakes up, he needs to come and find her. It turns out that Rita knows exactly what's going on with him, as the same thing happened to her in the past. By getting doused in the Alpha Mimic's blood, Cage gained the ability to reset time. Turns out that all of the Mimic's are controlled by the time-controlling Omega and that if they can destroy it, they will be able to win the war. As the Mimic's try to locate Cage's consciousness, he will start getting visions of the Omega, giving them clues as to where to find it, so that they can destroy it. Through loop after loop, Cage and Rita get closer and closer to finding the Omega. Tired of watching her die no matter what he does to try and stop it, in one loop, Cage doesn't go to Rita at the base and instead goes in search of the Omega alone. He gets to the place in his visions, a dam in the Alps, but quickly realizes that it is a trap, as the Omega is not there and he is ambushed by an Alpha. The Alpha attempts to kill him by slowly draining his blood, therefore taking away his ability to time-jump, but he manages to drown instead, waking up the previous morning once again. Armed with the knowledge that the Mimic's are playing with them and the fact that the Alps are a dead end, Cage and Rita seek out a scientist, Dr. Carter, an expert on Mimic physiology, who may have a solution. On the authority of the UDF, he designed and created a transponder that would neurally link with the Omega, giving them it's location. The only problem is, it needs to be hooked to a live Alpha in order to work. Going on the hunch that Cage's blood, since it hold the ability to time jump, may work, they break into the UDF offices to obtain the device, this portion told through a number of off camera loops. Once they leave the building, UDF officers step in to arrest them, leading to a hectic car chase. Cage uses the transponder and discovers that the Omega is housed below the flooded Louvre in Paris. Before Rita can kill him and reset the day, their car crashes and they both blackout. Cage awakens in a military hospital, having been given a blood transfusion, wiping out his time jumping ability. He and Rita escape, determined to destroy the Omega before the invasion the following morning, in essence saving all of the soldiers about to deploy. Recruiting the soldiers in J-Unit, they head to Paris to stop this thing before it starts. Cage and Rita are the only two to survive the trip to the Louvre, and Rita eventually sacrifices herself so that Cage can destroy the Omega. As he is swimming towards it, grenades in hand, he is attacked by an Alpha. Dropping the grenades, he turns to look at the alien, showing it that he had pulled the pins before letting go. The grenades blow, destroying the Omega, which in turn destroys all of the Mimic's on the planet. As he is dying, Cage's body absorbs the Omega's blood. He awakens once again, but this time, two days before the invasion. The Omega has been destroyed and the war is virtually won. With his ranking still in tact, he finds Rita, who he has come to love. As he steps towards her, the screen fades to black.
To say that I was pleasantly surprised by this movie would be a gross understatement. A cross between Groundhog Day and any other alien invasion movie, I found myself thinking of Aliens as I watched it. Watching it gave me the same kind of feelings I get when I watch the James Cameron classic (once I was old enough to see it for the fantastic movie that it is and not let it scare the crap out of me, anymore). And that is not a bad thing at all. It is honestly, a great sci-fi flick, with fantastic humour and great heart. Although it pulls from other science fiction tropes, it weaves them together in a surprising and pleasant way. While I'm not a fan of Tom Cruise, I liked him in this role because it was outside of the box for him. Instead of playing the macho hero, his character is actually a bit of an ass, and a huge coward to boot. I was able to see past Tom Cruise and actually see William Cage, which is what you hope for in any movie. And don't get me started on Emily Blunt. The woman is amazing! She seems to have unbelievable chemistry with everyone she works with (if you haven't seen her and Matt Damon in the Adjustment Bureau, you really need to!), and here it's no different. Rita is an incredible, strong, determined character, and it's nice to see the female lead being the one to kick ass and take names, especially in a Tom Cruise movie. The pacing of this film was fantastic too, the loops and flashbacks edited perfectly to get the right tone and feel. It is a formula that could have gone horribly wrong, but didn't because the film makers actually used it sparingly and as a way to move the story forward.
While the film as a whole is excellent, I did have a few issues with it. First off, the plot is a little thin. While the premise as a whole makes sense on paper, there are quite a few plot holes when it comes to the explanation of the whole time-loop theory. I get that it's difficult to truly explain something so complex, but you're expected to go on blind faith for most of the film, just accepting the theory that Rita and Dr. Carter have come up with in regards to the Omega and it's link to the Mimic's. Now, it may be that, somehow, they figured all of this out while Rita was looping through time, but since we don't get to see what her experience was like, we'll never know. I have also heard rumblings about the ending being a bit of a cop-out, but on this one I disagree. While I would have been content if Cage and Rita had sacrificed themselves and stayed dead when the end credits rolled, I think that the addition of the last loop was clever. Cage's consciousness brought him back even earlier, to before everything started, but with alternate timeline already in place, the Omega destroyed. While it would have been easy for him to turn around and go on with his life, he made the decision to seek Rita out and see what happens now that the war is won. Maybe it's the romantic in me... I also really liked the fact that the film ended ambiguously, without Cage actually saying anything to her. Just a smile and a fade to black.
Overall this is an excellent, original sci-fi film, and it's unfortunate that it didn't do better at the box office in it's opening weekend. I blame the fact that it's coming off of the Tom Cruise led Oblivion, which was a disaster of epic proportions, and the terrible marketing campaign that Warner Brothers hatched for the film. The trailers that were released did not do the film justice, making it look, in part, like a sequel to Oblivion. If they had shown what a smart, witty film this actually is, I think that it might have been received better by audiences. Another mistake that Warner Brothers made was changing the title from that of the book, All You Need Is Kill, to Edge of Tomorrow. The original title was edgy and in your face, while the new title is pretty bland and generic. I don't know if a different title would have made that much difference in the long run, but I guess we'll never truly know.
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