Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

12 January 2020

I heard generally good things about Edge of Tomorrow. I remembered the preview of the film having Tom Cruise hopping around time during a sci-fi alien battle, and I wasn't sure what to make of it. Ultimately this is Groundhog Day as a war movie, and it holds up pretty well all things considered.

Starring Cruise, along with Emily Blunt and the late Bill Paxton, it builds up better than I expected. Cruise is set up as a marketing/sales rep for this alien war, but isn't a soldier. As this day repeats, his character builds up his knowledge and experience to progress further each day toward a path to victory.

This is ultimately an action film, and that's fine, but it makes the ultimate destiny of this film a little tough: usually war films have character growth, personal or group victory, or a message about war (pro or con). But by the end of the film I didn't get anything solid for any of those things. The actual ending makes sense in the end, but felt like a written ending, more clinical in its delivery than it needed to be. It's a fresh take on both war and time loop movies though, and I appreciate how they worked the story out and make it come together as something fairly original. 7/10