Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

 

It's not often a Western film is made from Japanese source material and gets it right, but this one does. Not to mention this is a pretty darn decent science fiction action flick with some unexpected twists and turns. 

Oh, and Tom Cruise of course doing pretty much all of his own stunts, because of course. 

When aliens invade Earth, there is a massive war going on across Europe. These creatures, known as Mimics, manage to decimate countries and it feels as though the combined forces of the world are almost helpless. So they hatch a desperate plan for a final, all-out assault. Into this comes Cruise's character Cage, a liaison officer who is actually a coward and a bit of a slimy bastard. He is forced to join the invasion, but the battle on the beach doesn't go all that well, as the troops are being slaughtered and Cage quickly dies after killing a strange version of the Mimics. He then wakes up again at the exact same point during the previous day and he doesn't get what the hell just happened.

Over the course of hundreds, maybe thousands of times he keeps on dying and waking up again at the same time. He starts to discover that the alien he killed was a creature with the ability to loop time, which is also why the aliens manage to stay one step ahead of the humans. Cage quickly learns that Rita Vrataski, who is seen as the best trooper in the entire armed forces, also had this ability, but she lost it. Now Cage is the only one who can do this and they need to find the hivemind, the Omega. If they destroy this one, then the war is truly over, but this will require Cage to die a lot more times... 

You might assume that doing the same thing over and over again would become tedious after a while, but the filmmakers cleverly avoided this by keeping things snappy and having enough variation. You can tell that the character of Cage does get a little sick and tired of it, but that is only to be expected. I mean, suppose you had to live the same exact day over and over again and dying literally thousands of times? But the dynamic between Cruise and Emily Blunt really makes this all work. Not just that, but the action scenes are really well done and the battle on the beach feels almost as disconcerting and chaotic as a real war would, only this time with aliens. And despite it being chaotic, it is shot and edited really well, so you never lose track of what is happening. 

And you know what? This really is a very good adaptation of the source material. Sure, the details have changed and the story does play it rather differently than in 'All You Need Is Kill', but for those people that complain how Western media rarely seems to capture what made the Japanese original so great, this one is actually a very good fit, as all involved do their best to make it work. 

Do I like the design of the aliens? Not particularly, but they looked really awkward in the manga as well, even more so than here, so it's okay. When the original design looked like a football with a horse's teeth, then these sinewy panther-like things that wriggle all over the place are a decent substitute. 

And Bill Paxton once again shows what a great actor he was. You're still sorely missed, sir. 

Anyway: a rather underrated sci-fi film that deserves some more praise, but especially more love. It really is better than it gets credit for.