‘Come find me when you wake up!’

Based on the book All You Need is Kill, Edge of Tomorrow is about an army officer (Tom Cruise) who finds himself dying and repeating the same day over and over again when coming in contact with an alien during a war between humanity and these invaders. His skills increase as he faces the same extreme combat daily and his partnership with a Special Forces warrior (Emily Blunt) gets him closer and closer to defeating the enemy.

When you think of a action movie starring Tom Cruise, you kind of think that it will be no different from anything he’s done before. Edge of Tomorrow is unlike any Cruise action flick we’ve seen before and it’s a damn good thing it was. The script has literally been flipped and instead of Cruise being in the badass action role, Emily Blunt stars as the badass who wields a helicopter blade as a weapon and one who holds the record for most alien kills; a character in the movie who every soldier is trying to be. Most of the movie follows them as they weave their way through this nightmare of a mission, but we do get to see great side characters from great actors. Bill Paxton as Master Sargeant Farrell was a great add on. He brought a somewhat cheesy but fun character to the screen who helped bring down the incredible tension that was going on throughout the movie. Brendan Gleeson as the General was also another great part of the movie. Although it was small, he’s always great to have on screen because he’s so good at what he does, especially talking down to Tom Cruise.

As for the story, it could not have been written or structured any better. The idea of a sci-fi time looping thriller seems like something that may have been done before, but it hasn’t. Each time time looped, the stakes got higher and higher and it made that much more of a better movie to watch because you started to feel and understand for these characters. It wasn’t just the same loop each time, each time we saw a different perspective of that loop and sometimes it would be the first or the hundredth time that it has looped. Going to back to how well planned out and structured the movie was. It didn’t repeat itself, as the headline says. Showing a different perspective or time of that loop made the picture as a whole that much stronger.

With every movie, there are definitely negatives because no movie is ever perfect. But quite honestly, some of these will just be me picking at the film and things that could have been ‘tightened’ up. First off, although it was a little fun, I thought the ‘J Squad’ was a little to much. In a world army full of soldiers who are fighting against alien invaders for humanity, would there really be a squadron full of misfits like these guys? Plus in the first battle scene, almost every single one dies within minutes. It made sense to throw Cage (Cruise) in there because he was kind of a wimp and coward, but the squad itself just didn’t seem like they would be part of an army like that. Another thing is Rita’s (Blunt) friend the Doctor who some how knows about the ‘omega’ and how to find it and how to make a machine to connect with it from one vision that Blunt’s character had – at least that’s what I got from it. He might actually know how to find it and connect to it, but it wasn’t touched on as much as it could have been (again, nitpicking). Lastly, although I absolutely love how the film ended going to black, the parts before didn’t make sense to me. He kills the omega with a belt of grenades, doesn’t get blown to bits along with it, gets blood attached to him again, but when he wakes up the alien’s are in retreat and dying? I thought the whole thing about the Alpha’s and Omega was that they time loop so they can’t die? If that’s true, wouldn’t the time loop back further make it worse for humanity instead of the aliens? I don’t know, I could be completely wrong but that doesn’t seem to make sense to me.

With all that said, Edge of Tomorrow is one of the strongest sci-fi thriller movies in a while. The story was great, the acting was fascinating and the special effects were phenomenal. The obvious best part of the movie was the special effects because of the fight sequences and the aliens (who were down right terrifying). But we have come to expect movies like this from Tom Cruise, because most of his movies, if not all, are pretty damn entertaining. As for Emily Blunt, she has become a powerhouse lately with some great movies and can become a dynamite of an female action star. Her performance in this stole the show for me, my favorite part of the movie by far. Surprisingly, with a terrible marketing campaign it had, Edge of Tomorrow has become one of the best movies of this year. It was strong, fun, and entertaining which is exactly what a summer blockbuster like this should do.

Rating: 8.5/10