As the song goes: “I…need to know now…can you love me again?”
Edge of Tomorrow
©2014 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.;
in assoc. with Villiage Roadshow Pictures, Ratpac-Dune Entertainment;
a 3 Arts production
Exec. Producers: Doug Liman, Dave Bartis, Steve Mnuchin, Joby Harold, Hidemi Fukuhara, Bruce Berman
Producers: Erwin Stoff, Tom Lassally, Jeffrey Silver, Gregory Jacobs, Jason Hoffs
Screenplay: Christopher McGurrie, Jez Butterworth & John-Henry Butterworth;
based on the Novel All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka
Director: Doug Liman
Director of Photography: Dion Beebe (ASC, ACS)
Editors: James Herbert, Laura Jennings
Running Time: 113 minutes (includes some 7½ min. of credits)
Rated “PG-13” for action violence, some language
Stars: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton (Master Sgt. Farell), Brendon Gleeson, Noah Taylor (Dr. Carter), Kick Gurry (Griff), Dragomir Mrsic, Charlotte Riley (Nance), Jonas Armstrong (Skinner), Franz Drameh (Ford), Masayoshi Haneda (Takeda), and Tony Way (Kimmel)
Premise
Alien “mimics” invade Earth.
General Brigham (Gleeson) forces Major William Cage (Cruise), for the greater part a media personality, into a combat role; but first, he details the operation.
“Operation Downfall: the entire (world) United Defense Force, invading from France, the Mediterranean, Scandinavia, relieving pressure on the eastern front, allowing the Russians and the Chinese to push back. We all meet in the middle, eliminating this mimic scourge along the way. A lot of good soldiers are going to die, tomorrow, Major.”
Little does Brigham—or anyone else—know that everyone will die by the way things are going. But few do know there is a chance, getting to the heart of the matter, using the secret weapon of the mimics against themselves: the ability to reset a whole day of time—with it, gaining the element of surprise over “the enemy.” Getting the blood of an Alpha mimic into one’s system enters one into their system.
William Cage is one of two known figures to get burned to death with an Alpha’s blood, in combat. The other, Rita Rose Vrataski (Blunt), celebrated for her efforts at Verdun, little do the public know how she won the battle. (And she’s yet to learn something else of it.) Cage dies, and lives the routine repeatedly, starting at the point of being roused in handcuffs to undergo the “On your feet, maggot!” treatment as a Private. Finally, he finds the few that know about the Omega device that resets the day. And he begins to see the “visions” that they see, tapped into the system.
But when it comes to pain, the early stages of rewakening he relives is not the half of it.
Sense
The real pain comes when Cage finally finds Rita, and saves her life on the Island beach, that, reworking the day, he can only get so far with her; no matter the turns, the plots, the ways at which he plays this extensive game of Chess, the mimics are everywhere—hidden, buried, submerged. He gets to know her, only to watch her die, over and over again. So it’s like Groundhog Day, except war and pain instead of comedy.
Rita had her own morbid repeat with “Hendricks”—someone she knew:
“Is he why you won’t talk to me?” asks Cage, in the car.
“Don’t ever mention his name again,” Rita responds.
“Why?—Are you…in love with him?”
“—He’s dead. And I watched him die three-hundred times, and I remember…every detail—I remember everything. So I don’t need to talk about it.”
“I’m sorry,” he eventually apologizes.
“It’s just war,” she punctuates, right before the vehicle runs out of gas.
Eventually, Cage trudges through the agony, alone, before finding just how valid these so-called “visions” are.
Sci./Tech
The writers seem to know what they’re doing here—with the advanced weaponry, the technology both futuristic and plausible, and even the names. But, unfortunately, the soldiers drop in, and…they never leave alive, and neither does the premise.
The downside to the science behind the premise of time travel, or mental/spiritual “rewind,” doesn’t quite work here, logically. How can retracing the steps of matter from a future point of time, lead back to an earlier point without? Beyond that murky argument, how would a blood transfusion ruin it?
Summary
Apart from the holes in the science, the obvious acting in the intro—which sets the actors apart from the newscasters, particularly with Gleeson’s appearance—and the “blow it up” solution for any a final target (as with Armageddon, which would, in fact, make things worse in reality), this has got to be one of the better movies I’ve seen. It’s PG-13, but it sucks you in without having to demonstrate much.
This isn’t Starship Troopers. The gun is literally turned on oneself. Unfortunately, the previews don’t do this film justice. The story conveys a suffering that tests endurance on another level, a mental demand that reminds its characters that they know little, and reminds the viewer of his/her mortality by the end. Yes, it is one of those movies that says, learn and live. And it doesn’t star Nicholas Cage.
I can’t say that this movie has as much depth as the other Cruise movie I’ve mentioned before—Oblivion. But it does what a movie is supposed to do, following in the footsteps of films like The Matrix and Snowpiercer: immerse the audience in a dream.
The feature’s good enough to get me to want to read the novel, preferably in English. Too bad the DVD rental doesn’t have feature commentary. Grade: B+.
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