“Edge of Tomorrow” might just be the greatest video game movie ever made. Only, it’s not actually based on a video game, thank God -- in actual fact, it’s based on a novel, 2004’s “All You Need is Kill,” penned by Japanese writer Hiroshi Sakurazaka. What I mean is, it’s a film which takes on the structure of a video game, thanks to a premise which has Tom Cruise respawning over and over again like a video game character against the war-torn backdrop of an alien invasion. Cruise plays William Cage, a cowardly army major and PR specialist who to his horror is thrust into the battlefield when Earth is invaded by militarised extraterrestrial beasties. Killed by the enemy, he awakens the previous day, finding himself stuck in a time-loop where he must fight the exact same battle day after day until the battle is won.
The moment Cage wakes up is essentially the film’s checkpoint: each time he dies, he respawns before the battle begins, given another chance to win the war and effectively beat the game. And each time he goes into battle, he’s given a chance to improve, to work out a new and more effective strategy: he memorises every detail and plans out every step, much like a player would on an especially tough level. There’s even a tutorial stage, as Cruise is trained by Emily Blunt’s iron-tough Special Forces Sergeant Rita Vrataski in a room full of spinning metal claws. It’s all very video gamey. Of course, that’s a term oft considered an insult in this medium: you call a film video gamey, chances are you ain’t giving it five stars. And yet in the case of “Edge of Tomorrow,” a film which operates under the rules of a video game, it’s a full endorsement. And unlike every movie based on a video game I’ve seen in the past, I felt like I was involved in the action and the drama rather than watching someone else play a game while waiting to be handed the controls. For Doug Liman’s film manages to do what no movie based on a video game has ever done before: it’s engaging, it's involving and it's (*gasp*) fun.
Of course, with the idea being that the film repeats itself over and over again, it runs the risk of becoming monotonous -- but thanks to brisk editing, genuinely funny levity and the always developing relationship between Cruise and Blunt, the action never grows tiresome (in fact, it remains hugely enjoyable right through to the high-stakes Louvre-crashing finale). And Christopher McQuarrie, Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth’s script successfully taps into Cage’s mentality: it understands that reliving the same day and over and over again and dying at the end of it would exhaust, frustrate and dishearten, especially when you have to watch a person you’ve grown to care for, i.e. Blunt’s character, die time and time again. Blunt, by the way, is terrific, holding her own against Cruise’s movie star mojo; with this, ”The Adjustment Bureau,” “Looper” and the upcoming “Into the Woods,” she’s establishing herself as the next big star of sci-fi/fantasy cinema.
I wasn’t a fan of Cruise’s previous sci-fi vehicle, 2013’s “Oblivion.” I felt it was too derivative of other, better sci-fi movies and struggled to find an identity of its own. “Edge of Tomorrow” is also derivative, taking its central time-loop concept from “Groundhog Day” and “Source Code.” But it takes that concept, makes it its own, has fun with it and allows us to have fun with it too. In a year of strong popcorn movies, “Edge of Tomorrow” is one of the best, offering pretty much everything you could ask of a summer blockbuster: heart, thrills, laughs, spectacle, an engaging story and Tom Cruise battling alien scum. My only disappointment: it’s a video game movie co-starring Bill Paxton and yet at no point does he utter his immortal line from “Aliens:” “Game over, man! Game over!”
Rating: 8/10
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