Edge of Tomorrow

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Doug Liman Starring: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton and Brendan Gleeson

Tom Cruise, a sci-fi story, Summer movie season...sound familiar? Given his track record the last few years, it would be reasonable to expect one more tiresome Cruise movie but I was surprised to find he disappointed me--in the most pleasing way. Edge of Tomorrow isn't an assault on the ears and eyes with techno-mayhem straining movie-screen borders, but an exciting, edgy thriller with brains and heart. Sure, it has its moments of destruction and violence but with a terrific script by Christopher McQuarrie, Jez Butterworth, and John Henry Butterworth; based on the novel All You Need is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, it is all a part of the story-fabric rather than an end.

Tom Cruise plays Major Cage, a PR military officer of sorts whose sole responsibility is luring recruits for a war with an alien race called Mimics who have occupied most of Europe though they are contained for the moment. Cage travels to London to meet with General Brigham (Brendan Gleeson), who commands the British/American forces in the war. Brigham orders Cage to join the D-Day-like invasion of the beaches of France to film the combat for recruitment purposes. Cage balks at the idea; demonstrating an appalling lack of spine. Before he can leave the building, Brigham has him tasered and arrested for desertion. Cage wakes to find himself being ordered about by a tough Master-Sargeant named Farell (played amusingly by Bill Paxton) on a military base (formerly Heathrow Airport). Cage is treated as a deserter and stripped of his rank while forced to join a shabby unit who are scheduled to join the invasion force the next day.

His brothers-in-arms have little respect or patience for his un-trained, ill-prepared condition and let him know it; mocking him at every turn. Cage continues to resist the deployment but it proceeds as planned as the aircraft transporting the unit takes enemy fire, forcing the soldiers to leap willy-nilly from the craft's interior.
On the beach, destruction and chaos reign as soldiers are crushed by flying craft shot down from the sky and riddled with enemy rounds. Cage wanders about, afraid and tentative until he comes face to face with the alien enemy: a kind of octopus/spider hybrid; all tentacles and spinning, lethal aggression. While the tentacled creatures batter the humans about, including Cage, he manages to kill a nastier, bigger Mimic known as an Alpha, which drenches him in blood. Cage is also killed in the process. Or is he?

In time Cage learns that Mimic blood has given him the ability to re-live the day from the moment he arrives at the Heathrow base and in doing so, he learns the invasion will fail regardless of military intervention. He tries to convince the soldiers in his unit of his ability and what it means for them but it all has little effect.

While reliving the invasion, Cage meets a soldier who has become the face of the resistance; a no-nonsense woman named Rita (Emily Blunt), who can be seen in recruitment posters with the nickname "Full Metal Bitch."
After several loops where Cage saves Rita from a Mimic attack, she says to him "come and see me when you wake-up." Cage manages to find Rita during her rigorous training with Mimic-facsimiles. She is wary of him at first but understands his predicament. We learn thereafter that she too had his ability once but a blood transfusion dispelled the alien hemoglobin, rendering her unable to loop. Rita explains to Cage that the Mimics are controlled by a centralized mind called an Omega and because his blood has mingled with the aliens, they can attach a transponder--designed by Rita's tech go-to guy Dr. Carter (Noah Taylor)--to Cage that will allow them to locate the Omega. Rita also explains that if the Omega isn't destroyed, the Mimics will win the war because an enemy that knows the future can anticipate any attack. The Omega sends them on a wild-goose chase to a false location but after more looping and Cage's Mimic-ispired visions, they locate the alien mind, which rests underwater inside the subterranean chambers of the Louvre. In a clever twist, Cage also loses his ability to loop, which adds a tense, exciting wrinkle to their final mission.

The film is well-paced, very well-acted and exceptionally plotted. Because Cage relives one particular day, a la Groundhog Day, opportunities for humor abound and pervade what is mostly a dramatic, sci-fi story. It is amusing to see Cage anticipate Master-Sargent Farell's commands and befuddle his hostile unit with facts about their lives.

Blunt and Cruise share some glowing onscreen chemistry. It is refreshing to see Blunt's character as decisive and proactive while Cruise's Cage often follows her lead. Cage and Rita eventually establish an egalitarian bond that runs contrary to the male-always-leads default setting common in most Hollywood action films.

The skein the film creates with its wonderful plot is kept tangle-free though it also keeps one alert. I really liked the ending, which returns the story to something more human after the intensity of the climax. I also had to chuckle, seeing Paris and the Louvre reduced to stone detritus and the Eiffel Tower woefully toppled onto its side. Why Paris seems to always be the whipping boy in many sci-fi action movies is a mystery. I guess Hollywood filmmakers feel American audiences would rather the French suffer the devastation of an alien invasion than New Yorkers or Angelenos.

Doug Liman has given us Go with it's multiple threaded storyline and the hyper-kinetic Bourne Identity and here he gives us a little of both. One can only hope the rest of the Summer offerings will be as entertaining and intelligent. I left the theater feeling the current movie season at the multiplex might not be a bummer after-all. But it's only June.