Tom Cruise in "Edge of Tomorrow"
Major Cage (Tom Cruise) is having an unfortunate day. Earth is losing its war with an invading alien race dubbed the Mimics. As a craven public relations officer for the globe’s united defense, Cage makes the mistake of annoying the wrong general (Brendan Gleeson). Consequently, the major is shanghaied into an infantry unit on the eve of a surprise assault on the Mimics. Strapped into a robotic war suit with no combat experience, Cage only lasts a couple of minutes in the next day’s battle before meeting a messy demise.
That’s when things get strange. The major awakens the previous morning and is forced to live that miserable, fatal day all over again. And then again. After a few runs through the same day, Cage determines that his bizarre situation is linked to fellow foot soldier Rita (Emily Blunt), a tough-as-nails sergeant whose alien-slaying exploits have made her a propaganda celebrity. She knows what Cage is enduring, and how his time-tripping can be used to deal the Mimics a lethal blow.
Edge of Tomorrow’s glib concept—“Starship Troopers meets Groundhog Day”—belies a film of remarkable energy, as well as unexpected braininess and pathos. Director Doug Liman and the film’s trio of writers bestow Tomorrow with that rarest of traits in big-budget science-fiction cinema: respect for the viewer’s intelligence. The film swiftly establishes just enough facts about the extraterrestrial incursion to get the ball rolling. Thereafter, Tomorrow occupies itself with uncovering the rules of Cage’s temporal entrapment bit by bit. That the film does this while also nimbly weaving together world-building, character development, and plot advancement is immensely impressive. While its hook might owe a debt to the endless reloads and pattern memorization of contemporary video gaming, Edge of Tomorrow is tight sci-fi action filmmaking at its finest.
