The Case for Living on the Edge

 

One of the problems with Tom Cruise’s last science fiction blockbuster, Oblivion, was that it was all very serious.  There was action, there was adventure, and a bit of mystery, but it was all told in a rather humourless fashion.

The Edge of Tomorrow, Cruise’s latest flick in the same genre, rectifies this problem, and is all the better for it.

Hiring Bill Paxton as a loud mouthed Virginian Sergeant was a stroke of genius, and he steals the show in every scene he is in.  Cruise does solid, dependable work, and is a great serious central hero, Cage, who develops from chicken to kickarse throughout the course of the film.  However, as a personality, he doesn’t stand a chance next to the wisecracking, tough as nails Sergeant, who slowly finds his every word predictable in the face ofCage’s growing familiarity with the day.

It’s not spoiling anything by saying that the story is this: after dying on the battlefield of France in an encounter with an alien enemy, Cage finds himself reliving the same day over and over again, and sets about trying to use that experience to better himself and secure victory for the human race.

Helping him become a skilled warrior is Emily Blunt’s character Rita, the fearless poster child of mankind’s resistance forces.  Blunt appears to have a great time in her role, enjoying killing Cage at any slip up so he can learn to avoid being killed by Rita again next time.

The set up of the world is a little haphazard.  Apart from the mechanised suits and the odd holographic projector (and any other piece of techno-wizardry needed for the plot), the hardware on display looks fairly “now”.  NATO military forces seem to be combined into one force that has an eagle as an emblem, even though it does not appear the Americans are actually in charge. In fact, membership seems completely voluntary, given the very ethnically diverse companies that are put together, though by “ethnically diverse” I mean a collection of people from different English speaking nations (American, English, Australian) rather than a multilingual force including Spaniards and the like.

The alien creatures are… well, all tentacles and movement and screaming but all interchangeable, their strategic objectives are fairly obscure, and their command and control structure is, again, rather convenient to the plot.  They are pretty dull even if they have a great penchant for killing, but this film is not about interspecies diplomacy. 

The humour really carries it along at a brisk pace.  There are no pauses for deep reflections on the nature of the universe, the horrors of war, or bringing humanity together in common cause.  There is the odd pause to reflect on Blunt’s toned body though, and the jokes come thick and fast amongst the explosions and action pieces.  

I was very happily enjoying myself (and, by the sounds of laughter and the odd whooping from people around me, the rest of the audience loved it too) until it got to the very end, and then it kind of went of the rails a little.  To me, the conclusion didn’t really make a huge amount of sense and was all highly “convenient” in a completely unplanned way.  And, as it was told with almost a complete lack of the spark and humour from earlier in the film, it almost felt out of place.  On the bright side, the resolution was short – and then the Edge of Tomorrow was over.

Verdict: The Edge of Tomorrow is a great action film, with lots of explosions and action and, above all, amusing characters that are actually worth rooting for rather than unengaging characters that you wouldn’t mind seeing killed (see Godzilla, once Bryan Cranston disappears).  It ends more with a whimper than a bang, but the bangs in between the beginning and the end are brilliant and definitely worthwhile.  8.5 Alphas to 10 Omegas.