Edge of Tomorrow is director Doug Liman’s (The Bourne Identity) offering to the already overflowing table of summer blockbusters, and personally I feel it’s one of the few that earns its place.
Based on the 2004 novel All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, it focuses on Earth deep in the throes of war with a seemingly unbeatable alien menace called Mimics, and a series of events involving Major William Cage (Tom Cruise) that lead to him reliving the same day on repeat.
Usually when Tom Cruise stars in an action film he’s the already established superhuman phenom, ready for action and with the skills to accomplish anything… but not this time. Major William Cage is an officer with no war experience who is forced into a front-line battle and almost immediately killed. Yet somehow he finds himself waking up at the beginning of that day. This happens again and again as he is killed and then resurrected, each time with the knowledge of his previous attempts remaining intact.
The battle scenes are truly stunning.
This series of repeating events gives the character the ability to grow as a warrior, gaining expertise as a fighter and a greater strategic advantage as he knows how events unfurl, and also allows Cruise to show a growing development of a character confused by what is happening, whilst still doing everything in his power to change events and stop his cycle of death. Cage initially has no intent to help the war effort, but gradually finding his footing and becoming more than he was before is a great transition that flows smoothly and is truly believable.
This is no more true than with certain loops where he shows his utter frustration at having to listen to the same speeches and see the same events transpire, the loops where he gives up on trying to save someone or tells someone the exact words they are about to use just so he can get to the point in time where he died and dodge the mistake that sent him back to the beginning. With such an emphasis on the time loop you’d think that the action may get repetitive, but this is not the case. Each time you see him go into battle you see something different, something that didn’t happen before or the same events, but played out in a different fashion. The film feels like an ever expanding theatre of war that only gets deeper and more varied the more it repeats.
One of the great things about this film though is all the things I haven’t mentioned; Emily Blunt as Rita, who guides Cage as he tries attempts to cope and learn and who plays a major part in the film helping to drive its narrative; Bill Paxton as Master Sergeant Farell blending humour and intensity into one perfect character; the cast of soldiers who add a layer of humanity to the fight. There’s also the action itself, which looks phenomenal. Soldiers in mech suits fighting an alien menace is always a winner in my books, but this is particularly impressive to look at, and is more than just sound and fury.
In my eyes Edge of Tomorrow is definitely one to watch if you love a good action movie with a great underlying storyline.
Author – Hal, Plymouth store
