Review: Edge of tomorrow

Now I haven't watched many Doug Liman movies - the only one I've seen is Mr. and Mrs. Smith and I enjoyed that mainly because of Brangelina, and I've heard about the Bourne Identity, but have never really seen it - so I wasn't expecting much from his latest film Edge of Tomorrow. However Liman seems to up his game here. Or maybe it's the writing which makes it a good film, or the performances from Tom Cruise (as Cage) and Emily Blunt (as Rita), or all three of these aspects put together that make the film so good. I don't know, but everything just seems to work. Edge of Tomorrow, adapted from the 2004 Japanese novel All You Need Is Kill, tells the story of a future where earth is invaded by extraterrestial beings, called Mimics, and humans need to fight to save themselves as these aliens have slaughtered millions of people and continue to do so. The films starts with showing news reporters from all around the world talking about the devastating events, which reminded me of various end-of-the-world films, or alien invasion movies like Battle: Los Angeles (Edge of Tomorrow is a much better film though).

 It's surprising that this film is great because some aspects of it are not that original. For example,  in films where there's character who doesn't know how to fight, is scared of fighting and is bad at it, we often see them turn into highly skilled fighters and save the day, and this is what exactly happens here. But maybe the reason why this film gets it right is because we're seeing action man Tom Cruise as the character who is useless at and against anything to do with fighting.

When  looking at the theatrical  release poster one would think that this is just another film where Cruise is gonna kick ass and take names throughout the whole of the film, as he's done in the whole Mission Impossible franchise and in other films such as Jack Reacher and Oblivion, and we'd still expect this when we see him in army uniform at the beginning of the film. However, we're initially presented with a character who's not used to combat, and who is frequently called a coward throughout the movie as he always wants to run away from the fight. It was quite funny to see Cruise running away from combat and doing anything to get out of fighting, and then being clueless about how to fight in the suits that soldiers have to wear. I think this is where the majority of the comedy in the film comes from.

Despite adamantly stating that he doesn't want to fight, Cruise's character, Cage is sent to fight in one of the next battles. This mission is meant to be an easy win for humans, but before they've even landed things go wrong, and it seems as if the Mimics know exactly what their plans are. Cage survives longer than a lot of the more experienced soldiers, even the soldier who's the face of the war, but he eventually dies - I won't spoil how he initially dies because I think his death was filmed quite well, and was a nice (well, not really nice) surprise for me. However, after he dies he wakes up again at the beginning of the day and  finds out that somehow the day resets every time he dies. As the tagline says he has to  "Live. Die. Repeat". I said that it was amusing to see Cruise as a character who's bad at combat and who's a coward, but what was even funnier, and quite hilarious were, the various ways he died. The first way he died was shot nicely as I said,  and was more serious, but the rest that followed were quite funny and stupid - one included him rolling underneath a car to slip away and find someone, but his timing was off. I'll leave it to your imagination to figure out what happened next...

In Edge of Tomorrow, we see a different side to Emily Blunt here, which I love, as we're used to seeing her in films such as Looper, The Devil Wears Prada and  The Adjustment Bureau, where she doesn't really kick ass, but in this film she does nothing but be a bamf (badass motherf*cker). In fact, her character Rita is the top soldier and the face of winning the war: a true war hero. She's quite brutal and does whatever it takes to try to win the war, even if it means sacrificing her own life. Cage does end up also kicking ass in the end, but without Rita this wouldn't have happened. He would have also still been clueless as to what was going on with him, and would have been sent to a pysch ward if Rita weren't there. However, there's a certain  weird  scene with Blunt's character, Rita, where she is doing push-ups on the floor and Cage interrupts her. She ends her push-ups by pressing her body weirdly against the floor, and this is repeated throughout the film because the day resets.  It was odd to me, but also funny to see this. It really has the potential to become an inside joke between you and whoever else watches the film. It  also added to the comical aspect of the film, even though I don't think it was meant to be purposely funny though.

Not only the characters interested me, but also the music. I was impressed by the musical score because it fit every scene perfectly. It was dark and was especially badass (sorry if I'm overusing thia, but it is needed to describe a film like Edge of Tomorrow) during the fighting scenes  on the  beach and the same track was repeatedly used at

different times in this certain scene after the day was reset. I think  that's why  I didn't get tired of it being repeated. It fit in well with the whole groundhog day aspect of the  film and intensified the moment. For me, the score was at its best  during a scene in Paris. I say this because for some reason the music here reminded me of the music in the Matrix, and the Mimics here were reminiscent of the Sentinels. Ah yes, that's another thing I liked about the film: the fact that it's not set in the USA, and we get see the characters travel to and fight in European destinations such as London and Paris.

Overall, I enjoyed watching Edge of Tomorrow and didn't think it dragged. The action scenes were intense and just had the right amount of action to be action packed, but not too over the top for it to be cheesy in the wrong way and not in the good Total Recall way, and there many funny moments in the film. I think it's a great blockbuster and highly recommend it. Hopefully, Liman continues to make films as good as this one.