Review: Edge of Tomorrow
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
[Grade: B] Doug Liman's latest has plenty of special effects, with polished CGI bringing mechanized soldiers, plus the nasty alien race they hate, to scrappy life.
City Paper grade: B
Screwing with how nerds tell time, even under the anything-goes auspices of science fiction, is a good way to enrage continuity freaks and confuse the hell out of everyone else. Luckily, director Doug Liman handles the big and little hands with the precision and flash of a blackjack dealer, ensuring Edge of Tomorrow concedes as little edge as possible.
Blessed with more vigor and personality than the director’s last swing at sci-fi, 2008’s flaccid Jumper, Liman’s latest has plenty of special effects, with polished CGI bringing mechanized soldiers, plus the nasty alien race they hate, to scrappy life. There are no star-power issues, either, with Tom Cruise making large-toothed Tom Cruise-y faces all over the place. But it’s the storytelling that’s ultimately responsible for the movie’s kiddish allure, combining the infinite-lives appeal of a shoot-’em-up video game with a military puzzle pandering to armchair strategists.
Sometime in the non-specific future, Earth is colonized by hostile invaders known as “Mimics,” ghastly tentacled monsters that make landfall in Western Europe, launching brutal expansion campaigns in every direction. As the world’s powers band together to form a single super-army, silver-tongued ad man-turned-CNN regular Maj. William Cage (Cruise) makes a living in front of the lens, talking up the strength of the neo-allies to any media outlet that will listen.
A pretty-boy PR officer with no actual fighting experience, Cage bristles when the supreme general (Brendan Gleeson) forces him onto the frontlines of a massive Normandy-like beach siege to “sell the invasion” to the public. Shanghai’d for resisting the order, he’s thrown into live combat by Kentucky-fried master sergeant (Bill Paxton) and promptly dies a bloody death. That’s not a spoiler: The second he perishes, the day inexplicably reboots to the very beginning of his service, giving him the opportunity to improve — and bolster the chances of unlikely war hero Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt) uncovering, and destroying, the source of the Mimics’ power.
Conceptually, Edge has a bit in common with Duncan Jones’ 2011 sleeper Source Code, focusing on an investigator who’s somehow able to use time as a treadmill en route to a shrouded endgame. Liman, however, is more nimble in his efforts to sidestep redundancy, even managing to have a little fun at his own expense.
