Back Rowe Reviews
Real Time Movie Reviews from the Back Row of a Theater

Edge of Tomorrow (PG-13)

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Directed by: Doug Liman
Starring: Tom Cruise
June 2014

This review was originally tweeted in Real-time from the back row of a movie theater and appears @BackRoweReviews. Though efforts were made to tease rather than ruin this movie’s memorable lines and moments, some spoilers may exist in the following evaluation. The original tweets appear in black, while follow-up comments appear in red. For concerns over objectionable content, please first refer to one of the many parental movie guide websites. All ratings are based on a four star system. Happy reading!

Edge of Tomorrow
Sorry, couldn’t help myself.

A broad scale alien invasion. Didn’t we already see this in
War of the Worlds...also starring Cruise?

Gleason orders Cruise to the beach...a second D-Day in France.
The motivation here seems a bit fuzzy. There must’ve been a more inventive way of forcing Cruise into the battle than this.

Paxton is from the foreign country Kentucky. Never heard of it.
Bill Paxton turns in a swaggering, southern fried role that’s truly unforgettable. His character has some of the best lines in the movie, although they do get tired after the second or third repetition.

Bowlegged troops invade the beach. You’d think they would’ve designed the suit with better ease of use.
Especially when considering how agile their enemy is.

Several
Groundhog Day time loops and then Cruise is shown a “terrific presentation.”

Cruise wants to know if Blunt has “tried all options.” Humorous.
Actually, that would be the first option explored by any red-blooded male. Hey, the fate of the world is at stake, right?

Cruise on a motorcycle...the movie wouldn’t be complete without it.
Save for touching on the well-established Cruise trope, this scene was wholly unnecessary…and contrived.

The safety net is gone...now things are getting interesting.
In order for the story to kick into high gear this absolutely had to happen…and not a moment too soon since I was getting whiplash from repeatedly being yanked back to the beginning.

Must...swim...faster.

Final analysis: an original actioner that’s engaging despite its repetitious plot.
But hats off to the editing team. Piecing this film together must’ve required an entire pallet of Excedrin.

Not as entertaining as
Oblivion, but still a decent yarn with some jaw-dropping action scenes.

Rating:
3 out of 4. If you disagree with my rating, don’t shoot me. Unlike Cruise, I can’t come back.

On the surface, the new Tom Cruise vehicle, Edge of Tomorrow, is a sci-fi/action riff on Groundhog Day (1993), the movie where Bill Murray wakes up every morning to the same song and the same day. This film is also reminiscent of ST:TNGs “Cause and Effect” which ended each act, save for the final one…of course, with the Enterprise exploding into scientifically impossible fiery bits in space. The crew discovers that they’re trapped inside a causality loop and that they’re doomed to keep repeating the same mistakes, which they do until the albino android figures out how to spring the ship from the temporal trap. In Edge, Cruise lives the same day over and over again and, like Murray’s character in Groundhog, finds that he can adapt, learn new skills and eventually figure a way out of the redundant riddle. It’s a deceptively simple premise, but beyond the trippy plot and mind-blowing FX, there’s a narrative depth here that one can sense more than readily identify. Clearly the film is engaging in a discourse on the nature of war, and the film’s release on the 70th anniversary of D-Day is far from coincidental. However, other social commentary is subtly broached here in a manner that’s nearly undetectable until it surfaces in the most startling fashion imaginable, much like the emergence of the movie’s maniacal Mimics. The obvious interpretation of the movie is that, like Inception (2010), the film is an attempt at creating a video game experience on the big screen (with gratitude to Henry Jenkins’ brilliant article on the subject entitled “No, You Do Not Have to Be a Gamer to Like Inception!”). Inception had multiple characters and levels, but Edge has one level with multiple lives that act as a reset button each time Cruise meets with an untimely demise. Although this is certainly a valid view of the movie, and don’t be surprised if you see blogs and articles written on the topic ad nauseam, I’d like to delve deeper into the movie’s multilayered mantle of meaning. Could it be that the movie holds up a mirror to our postmodern, post-911, post-economic meltdown society and projects back the anxieties and desperate exigencies of our lives? Cruise is a major in the army, but one day he wakes up to find that he’s a lowly private. In a similar reversal of fortunes, many in our country who once had white-collar jobs now have blue-collar jobs and have had to learn an entire new skill set in order to survive. We can sympathize with Cruise’s plight because we’ve all been affected, in one way or another, by the global economic recession. Many, like Cruise’s character, have fallen pretty far down the ladder from the once-powerful positions they enjoyed during the pre-recession period. In the same way that Cruise is trapped inside his repetitious nightmare, many people today are shackled by circumstances beyond their control and are prisoners inside their own lives. The drudgery of going to work, buying groceries and gas, paying bills and taxes, etc can feel like an unending cycle of sameness; a rote reality that’s really just an undiagnosed form of insanity. The movie’s poster is emblazoned with the slogan, “Live. Die. Repeat.” For many of our nation’s citizens, their life can be summed up as, “Wake up, go to work, come home, make supper, clean up, go to sleep, repeat.” So then, Cruise’s dogged insistence on reclaiming his autonomy and identity by breaking free from the seemingly preordained pattern of our existence should serve as a cathartic release for us…a powerful reminder that it’s possible to learn from our mistakes in the attempt at forging a better future. Director Doug Liman and his writers seem to be telling us that it’s tenable, with a good deal of ingenuity, dedication and sacrifice, to navigate through the treacherous terrain of our times and that the American Dream is still out there for those willing to fight like mad to attain it. In order to succeed, however, the assistance of others is required; even Cruise’s lone wolf character enlists the help of Rita (Emily Blunt) and Bill Paxton’s squad of elite soldiers during the movie’s climactic events. Cruise’s self-determination in spite of the impossibly rigid strictures of temporal mechanics also has much to say regarding rugged individualism versus the totalitarian state. This point could open up a whole discourse on the film’s politics, which I have neither the space nor inclination to address. Suffice it to say, the film invites multiple readings of its narrative, which makes it more complex and, therefore, more mentally stimulating than the standard action picture. In fact, the story is so involved that successive screenings are advised in order to fully appreciate the multifaceted plot and furiously filmed action sequences. How ironic, or insidious, that a film about a man stuck inside a time loop should invite repeat viewings. It’s almost as if Warner Bros. planned it that way.