[Movie Review] Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Plot Summary:A soldier fighting in a war with aliens finds himself caught in a time loop of his last day in the battle, though he becomes better skilled along the way.
Director: Doug Liman
Writers: Christopher McQuarrie (screenplay), Jez Butterworth (screenplay), John-Henry Butterworth (screenplay), Hiroshi Sakurazaka (novel All You Need Is Kill)
Runtime: 113 min
Main Cast:
- Tom Cruise as William Cage
- Emily Blunt as Rita Vrataski
- Brendan Gleeson as General Brigham
- Bill Paxton as Master Sergeant Farell
- Jonas Armstrong as Skinner
Review: by Anthony and Lee
A Tom Cruise action/sci-fi adventure movie? There was no way we were skipping out on this one.
What We Liked:
Tom Cruise has done it again. He is a veteran in the science-fiction action movies, and he played this role perfectly. It was cool seeing his character Major William Cage evolve from a military talking head to a completely inept rookie to hardened soldier. Where Cruise really won us over was with his comedic timing, however. After the time loop was established, it felt like we were all in on one big joke, and Cruise had a copy of the script.
Emily Blunt isn’t a stranger to this genre of movie either. We enjoyed seeing her in the sci-fi action movie Looper, and she’s just as good, if not better, in Edge of Tomorrow. Seeing her as the bad ass, huge sword wielding, living war hero Rita “Full Metal B*tch” Vrataski was awesome. She trained alone while onlookers stared in awe, watching her dominate a simulation that would kill most. When she hit the actual battlefield she was destroying enemies left and right, ducking, dodging, flanking, swapping out empty magazines, and reloading. She was a machine.
As video game fans, we likened the time loop shtick in Edge of Tomorrow to playing a really hard game without any save or checkpoints. Each time you die, no matter how far you progress in the level, you restart at World 1-1. Any gamer that’s done some glitching in a custom lobby knows that, if you get stuck in between floors of you glitch halfway into a rock, you simply kill yourself and respawn to start anew.
With that familiar “learn from failure” technique, it was fun seeing just how many times William Cage (Cruise) had to attempt to do any semi-difficult or extreme maneuver, such as rolling under a truck as it drove by or mapping out a massive beach front war zone.
As the movie went on, this premise allowed for a multitude of great things to happen. Any situation or conversation could be interrupted by Cruise predicting what would happened because he’d been through that situation several times before, trying every option and seeing various outcomes. Usually those moments were always funny. William Cage was kind of a jerk about going through the tiresome rigmarole, so he would just cut people off and finish their sentences.
What We Didn’t Like:
If you forgot to turn off your brain before watching this popcorn action flick, there were quite a few things plot-wise that don’t stand up to critical thinking.
For starters, why would the army force a deserter to deploy to war, and put them in a lethal exo-suit, when they could very well sabotage the mission and be a danger to themselves and others?
There are several other questions that we could pose here, but they might spoil the movie. Let’s just say that some of their decisions were quite flawed, and the ending did not make sense considering the information given to the audience.
We saw the movie in IMAX 3D, and at times the 3D was jarring. The creatures and their rapid moments on screen in certain scenes were headache inducing. There would be a massive creature flipping and spinning about, a torrent of bullets flying everywhere, debris and blood flying at you, and Cruise in his exo-suit stomping about all happening at once in poorly done 3D. It was too much at times.
Summary
We really enjoyed Edge of Tomorrow, poor 3D effects aside. The sci-fi elements and comedic beats were terrific. Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt have some real action hero and heroine on-screen chemistry.
Images courtesy of IMDB
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