Over the past decade Tom Cruise has disappeared into a wide-range of roles, from spy movie action hero (Knight and Day, Jack Reacher) to sci-fi movie action hero (War of the Worlds, Oblivion) with results ranging from forgettable to middling. While I will unabashedly defend Mission:Impossible—Ghost Protocol as the exception to the mediocrity rule, I will now have to add Edge of Tomorrow to that short list.
Adapted from the 2004 Japanese novel All You Need Is Kill, helmed by inconsistent director Doug Liman and penned by three writers (one of which wrote The Usual Suspects), Edge of Tomorrow manages to entertain throughout because of a plot that is basically Groundhog Independence Day. In the near future, an alien race has landed on earth, inciting a global war that has all but wiped out Europe. Thanks to “new jacket technology,” in which soldiers are outfitted Elysium-style in battle-enhancing metal exo-suits, humans have regained confidence after a victory at Verdun. Former ad-exec turned honorary major, William Cage (Cruise), acts as the face of recruitment when, in a corrupt political stunt, he is involuntarily enlisted to the front lines of the military’s next strike against the alien invaders. Squeamish and combat-green, Cage is thrust into the middle of battle and . . . dies.
It’s no spoiler, as this is the first of many lives Cage will go through. Something happens to him the first time he dies that locks him in a time loop, and like a kid playing Contra in the ’80s, each life brings him one step closer to defeating the alien scourge. Like Groundhog Day, the film stays fresh through smart casting and colorful characters as Cage explores new butterfly-effect variations with each repetition, and the script takes its premise to its maximum comedic and dramatic potential. Despite Cruise’s budget-enhancing star power, Edge of Tomorrow more closely resembles the work of Neill Blomkamp, albeit with a little less social commentary and more cool-looking, color-coded land squids, than Cruise’s previous forays into sci-fantasy. But its closest cousin is the video game, not any one in particular, but their structure. Watching Cage become a better warrior through repetition and memorization feels both new and familiar, and it makes Edge of Tomorrow quite possibly the best video game movie ever made.
