Edge of Tomorrow
Coming off of last year’s Oblivion, Tom Cruise has shown that he is still more than capable of leading exciting action movies. The initial trailers for this film had it titled as All You Need is Kill, the same title as the short story it is based on by Japanese author Hiroshi Sakurazaka. Later in the marketing push the name was changed to Edge of Tomorrow to remove any negative press regarding having the word ‘kill’ in the title. The film was directed by Doug Liman who is known for directing other films such as The Bourne Identity and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Emily Blunt costars with Tom Cruise in the film.
The film takes place in what is presumed to be the very near future. A bizarre meteor shower comes down over Europe but the world quickly learns that these meteors are really the beginning of an alien invasion. The aliens are known as ‘Mimics’ and they are very fast and very deadly. The invasion quickly takes over most of mainland Europe. Allied armies have joined together as a United Defense Force to push back against the invasion but nothing they do ever seems to work. Humanity is losing the war.
Recently, allied forces have seen a single victory, led by soldier Rita Vrataski (played by Emily Blunt) who single-handedly killed many Mimics. Cruise plays a military officer who heads the army’s public relations. Always far from battle and constantly spinning successes to talking heads on TV, he is suddenly thrust by his commander to the front lines for the impending massive-scale United Defense Force surprise invasion of mainland Europe to try and take it back from the Mimics. What follows is the film’s main repeating day motif as the invasion ensues over and over for Cruise.
We are still pretty early in the summer movie season but this will undoubtedly be one of this year’s gems. The film is extremely well written and surprisingly deep. It would be very easy to take the repeating day idea and rely solely on the strength of that, but there is so much more to Edge of Tomorrow. As an alien race, the Mimics are very uniquely thought out. Cruise and Blunt both give terrific performances. There is always a risk when a film repeats something over and over that viewers will tire of the repetitiveness but in this case great care is taken to make sure this doesn’t happen. Instead, watching Cruise’s demeanor change as he repeats the day over and over is one of the highlights of the film.
Solely due to what type of film this is, there will be many other movies this summer that make much more money at the box office. It is what it is. Movies like this aren’t going to gross a billion dollars. However, Edge of Tomorrow is definitely a must see and it will undoubtedly join the ranks of esteemed action/sci-fi films that will be talked about and watched for years to come.
