Directed By: Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity) Starring: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton, Brendan Gleeson
Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence, language and brief suggestive material
Run Time: 1 hour, 53 minutes
Synopsis: See below in the opening paragraphs
REVIEW
A: Hello dear readers! Sarah and I caught three films this past weekend, one of which was the teenage romance film The Fault in Our Stars (you can read our review of that HERE) on Friday night, and the second one of those was the new Tom Cruise sci-fi/action film Edge of Tomorrow. This is one I had been hearing great things about in the weeks leading up to its release, so suffice it to say I was excited to see this one. Before we get to the review, though, I feel like I need to explain the concept of the film just a bit.
Based on a 2004 Japanese novel called
"All You Need is Kill," Edge of Tomorrow stars
Cruise as Major William Cage, the head PR guy for a worldwide military called
the United Defense Force that's fighting an invasion from a destructive alien
race dubbed "Mimics." The UDF is losing the war by a large margin,
with Europe almost completely invaded by the Mimics, and only having won one
battle - the Battle of Verdun - thanks to the heroics of a soldier named Rita
Vrataski (Emily Blunt, The Devil Wears Prada).
After refusing to be embedded with a
troop on the front lines of a planned beach invasion called Operation Downfall,
Cage is stripped of rank and sent to basic training the day before the invasion
by General Brigham (Brendan Gleeson, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire). There, Cage is thrust into the front
lines of the invasion and promptly killed in action by an "alpha"
Mimic.....then somehow wakes up again back at basic training the day before the
invasion.
Despite attempts to tell everyone
something strange is going on and that the impending invasion is doomed from
the start, Cage keeps reliving the same two days over again. He finally
approaches Vrataski after seeing her on the battlefield and discovers she, too,
has experienced the same phenomenon thanks to her blood getting mixed with an alpha Mimic's blood and thereby gaining their power to manipulate time, which is how
the Mimics have been winning the war so far, and how she was able to win the
Battle of Verdun. From there they team up to learn how they can win Operation
Downfall and, more importantly, the war.
Whew! That's a lot of words! And one of the more
impressive parts about the film is that it's all summed up and explained very
well in the first act better than I did just now. So Sarah, now that we've seen the film and I've done my
best to set up the concept of the film, what did you think of Edge of Tomorrow?
