The Drum Beats Out of Time (An Edge of Tomorrow review)

Poster by Simon Delart.

Disclaimer: I, Jackson Alphonse Connell, being of sound mind and body, do solemnly swear to never mention the 1996 science fiction comedy film Groundhog Day while discussing the 2014 science fiction action film Edge of Tomorrow. The premise is already destined to invite more comparisons from other film critics, and I do not desire to add to those. This paragraph shall therefore be the first and only time I refer to Groundhog Day, and if I deviate from this, then may I be strapped to a chair and forced to watch Project X until my mind folds like a red-hot Mars bar.

Got all that? Good.

Based on the light novel All You Need is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, Tom Cruise IS Major William Cage, and despite having a name picked straight out of the Jar of Action Hero Noms de Guerre, he's a smug ad man working for the United Defense Force who's made a comfy job out of convincing brave men and women to strap on a mech-suit and die fighting a bunch of tentacled beasties called "Mimics". His cushy lifestyle runs out when General Brendan Gleeson sends him to the front line for a last stand against the alien/robot/Cthulhu(?) menace. You'd think sending a PR guy frightened of the sight of blood into battle would be a stupid idea, but it hardly matters since the operation is doomed from the start and everyone, including Cage, dies horribly.

Then he wakes up. The day's begun again. He's given grunt boots, Sergeant Bill Paxton gives a rousing speech about how combat makes everything equal and how we're the masters of our own fate, he makes himself unpopular with the international squaddies he'll be fighting with. Cage goes through the battle again, lives slightly longer, dies, then wakes up in the same place he started from. He's caught in a time loop, constantly fighting the same battle, and with the help of Rita Vrtarski (Emily Blunt), the so-called Angel of Verdun, he learns how to use this to end the war.

What Edge of Tomorrow resembles most is a 2000AD comic strip, that classic staple of British science fiction based around high concept ideas, hard-edged violence, attention to world-building and a streak of morbid humour running through it. Certainly, the decision to set most of it on a French coast and open with a battle strongly reminiscent of Saving Private Ryan adds to that impression. Then again, what other SF action flick would have a scene set in a dead caravan park? A movie that hinges around repetition would get stale quickly, and it's to Liman and the writers' credit that every new scenario feels fresh and offers some new development, even with the clunky exposition courtesy of Noah Taylor's moustachioed doctor. Quite a few scenes play out with the sense that Cage knows what's already happened, with an air of ambiguity over how many lives he's gone through to reach that point. Like a 2000AD story, it zips along at a brisk pace, with director Doug Liman using fake BBC/CNN news footage to set up the world from the start, then settling into the meat of the story.

And that story is Tom Cruise, one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, dying a whole lot. Liman mines some laughs out of the silly, often amazingly quick ways Cage bites it - sometimes he's run over, sometimes he's squashed, but more often than not it's Vrataski shooting him in the head to reset the timeline. See, Cage's alien-infected blood gives him that power, and if he loses too much of it or gets it replaced, he loses the gift, so every time he suffers a big injury (which is quite often), Vrataski elects to start over by killing him and picking up where they left off the next time around. Having gotten used to the idea of Tom Cruise as an ageless robot man not affected by the elements, watching him die over and over and over again is surprisingly cathartic and enjoyable. I don't think Sean Bean has died more times in his entire career than Cruise does in Edge of Tomorrow.

Ghoulish satisfaction aside, I like how Cage has an arc throughout the film. He starts as an oily coward, more suited to selling an image and counting the money while countless people die horribly in battle, and constantly tries to get out of actually having to do a goddamn thing. His first deployment has him shivering, pale, a film of snot running to his mouth, a rare look for Cruise and one that reminds you that, yes, beneath all the Scientology craziness there is a good actor somewhere there. Cage learns to adapt, to change, to plan, and he becomes a hero in a way that feels earned.

This isn't to overlook his co-star. On the contrary, I came out in love with Rita Vrataski, and not just because she's the only character in the movie taking on the Mimics with a giant helicopter blade as a sword. (Not completely, anyway.) The "Full Metal Bitch", as she's charmingly dubbed, has been through the time loop before, and her cold behaviour is the result of dying thousands and thousands of times fighting a pointless battle, watching comrades die the same way over and over, earning a title she doesn't feel she warrants. This never undermines her as an action hero, however; there's no frail bird waiting to be nursed back to health. Blunt gets just as many opportunities to be badass, maybe even more so than Cruise.

There's a pleasing weight to the mechanised battlesuits the protagonists wear into battle. I maintain that the best visions of the future in SF films are ones that look lived-in. Spare me your chrome skyscrapers and sleek cars that look like they've been designed by Apple, and give me dirty grimy machines held together with duct tape. I can imagine actual humans using them, repairing them by hand, struggling to turn the safety off. That's what gives CG actual presence. Less successful are the Mimics themselves, an ungainly cross between the Sentinels from The Matrix and the bugs of Starship Troopers. They move at an unsettling gait, but they lack the sense of crushing dread provided by the former or the gruesome murderiness of the latter. They just seem to punch people to death with their tentacles, because we got to keep that PG-13 rating.

Edge of Tomorrow might be the best video game movie made so far, and you can take that as a positive or a negative, but it really reminds me of cult dungeon-crawler Dark Souls, the closest gaming has gotten to recreating a trip to the village dominatrix. Like Edge, the game is built around a protagonist going up against an unfairly large opponent, being reduced to jelly, picking themselves up and figuring out how not to be reduced to jelly. Cage and Vrataski map out their plan to win step-by-step, which direction to turn and when a Mimic is going to appear, and it's satisfying to watch characters we're invested in get smarter and get closer to victory.

That's the heart of what makes Edge of Tomorrow work. It isn't too interested in the philosophical aspects of its story, but it mines the most out of its gimmick and centres it around two solid characters and has just enough smart to distinguish it amongst other popcorn films. Liman doesn't quite land the ending, but it's still a taut muscular action romp that feels like a return to form not just for Cruise, but for his director. Sometimes that's all you need.

Now if it had just retained the original title.