By Brett Blake EDGE OF TOMORROW is not the movie its trailers have been selling. Yes, they’ve communicated the basic gist of the plot, and they’ve given a good idea of the flavor of the action, but they’ve also depicted the movie’s tone to be fairly grim, even dour. It might be a surprise to learn, then, that the film itself is terrifically entertaining, with a healthy sense of humor and an engaging spin on some classic science fiction ideas. The film opens with the world at war with an invading alien race. The conflict is mostly confined to the European continent and - in one of several allusions to World War II - the story begins on the eve of a massive military assault on the aliens’ position in France. Shades of the D-Day invasion are heavily felt, which is appropriate given that this film’s opening weekend marks the 70th anniversary of that historic engagement. Tom Cruise stars as William Cage, a military P.R. officer who (through an interesting plot development) is dropped into the middle of the assault as though he were an ordinary soldier. Having had no combat training of any kind, he is quickly killed, only to find himself waking up the previous day. Now stuck in a time loop of sorts, he relives the invasion over and over, and thus begins his quest to both end the constant resetting of his life and - if possible - cripple the alien forces once and for all, a task that eventually requires the help of war hero/propaganda figurehead Rita, played by Emily Blunt. EDGE OF TOMORROW is the sort of film that I like to call a “blender” movie, where you drop in elements from prior stories, mix them up a bit, and - hopefully - you result in something that feels fresh. Sometimes the component parts are barely-disguised or too obvious, but in this case, director Doug Liman and the screenwriters are able to achieve a blend that, indeed, does feel fresh. EDGE OF TOMORROW’s primary influences are the alien invasion story and the time loop story (the best example of which remains GROUNDHOG DAY), and these two concepts are grafted together in a way that is novel and interesting. The most compelling element of the story is the way it handles Cruise’s character. Being a public relations mouthpiece, we see Cruise early on being a slick, smooth-talking spinner of information, regurgitating the same talking points over and over. He’s also a full-blown coward at the start of the story; it’s great the way in which the movie is unapologetic about this aspect of the character’s personality, and it only serves to set up a compelling and satisfying arc for the man to undergo. The screenwriters deserve credit for efficiently establishing the character in quick-but-meaningful fashion; there’s not a wasted moment to be found in here, something that also aids in the film’s fairly rocketing pacing. Cruise himself is great as our protagonist; he nails the character’s transition from a semi-asshole coward, to a scared-out-of-his-mind reluctant soldier, to - finally - a legitimately good and heroic man. He’s famous for doing as many of his own stunts as he’s allowed, and though there’s certainly no shortage of CGI splashed across the screen, Cruise brings a convincing physicality to the role. As his counterpart in the story, Emily Blunt is also terrific, playing a slightly damaged, closed-off, no-nonsense badass; on the page this could have easily been a one-note character, but Blunt hits all the appropriate subtleties, brings them to the foreground, and sketches out a convincing inner life for her character. Character actor stalwarts Bill Paxton (here at his most Paxton-y) and Brendan Gleeson also pop up and round out the cast in a fun way. And there’s the keyword: “fun.” At its best, EDGE OF TOMORROW is massively entertaining. It has a great deal of fun with the idea of the time loop Cruise finds himself in, deriving a ton of enjoyably perverse humor from the ways in which Cruise gets himself killed (he dies onscreen no less than several dozen times), several of which are certifiably laugh-out-loud moments. The humor never compromises the tone or the stakes of the narrative, but it adds an extra layer of enjoyment to the overall package. In culinary parlance, it’s the movie’s secret ingredient. Additionally, the script plays with the recurring beats that Cruise keeps re-living in neat ways, without ever allowing them to become boring or redundant; each repetition serves a purpose, and each reset takes us closer to the characters’ (and the story’s) ultimate destination. The movie is handsomely photographed, and the staging of the action is really quite good. Director Liman finds the sweet spot balance of being chaotic and visceral while still keeping everything clearly discernible and with a sense of spatial geography. The squid-like design of the alien creatures - slightly reminiscent of the machines from THE MATRIX - is nifty, and although we don’t exactly get to spend prolonged amounts of time in their presence, the lethal quickness and “unstoppable force” aspects they display make them effective villains for the story. The script does stumble just a bit in terms of the ending, but it’s nothing that threatens to bring down the movie as a whole. There’s one last thing I want to say, and it’s in regard to Tom Cruise himself, a celebrity I know some people have an aversion to. Here’s the thing - you can dislike the man’s personal life choices, or his perceived failings as an individual, or his public statements about this-or-that, but there should be no denying that he throws himself completely into his roles, gives a one-hundred-percent effort every time, and genuinely makes interesting choices when picking the films he wants to headline. The idea that some people seem to have written him off as a performer because of things he did nearly a decade ago (and which, I might say, were blown out of all proportion, as detailed in this excellent piece on his career in LA Weekly) is unfortunate. I say this simply to hammer home (to those who might have little interest in EDGE OF TOMORROW merely because Cruise is the star) that a dislike for Cruise personally - misguided though I think that might be - should be no reason whatsoever to avoid what is a really fun and exciting sci-fi/action tale. The quality of the movie should absolutely be able to transcend the baggage that Tom Cruise brings with him in the eyes of certain audience members. It’s the first big pleasant surprise of the summer, and well worth your time.
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