Edge of Tomorrow (2014). Saw it on June 8, 2014 at the Vista Theater.
There are/were a lot of good reviews for Edge of Tomorrow and it’s a movie that really puts in the effort to entertain you. Tom Cruise is really good in this role as a Major in the Army (I think) who is certainly good at his role as a PR specialist but is not a soldier by any stretch of the imagination. He presents the military’s role in the fight against the Mimic invasion but when the leading General demands he accompany the troops in the D-Day-esque invasion of the French shoreline in a last-ditch effort to defeat the Mimics, Major Cage balks. In no short order, he’s arrested as a deserter and sent as a Private to go anyway. Of course everything goes terribly and the battle is a disaster, but he manages to kill one of the aliens and promptly dies doing so, but then wakes up at Heathrow 24 hours earlier. Welcome to the movie!
It’s a really engaging storyline told often with humor as Tom Cruise gets killed in every which way, whether it’s by death on the battlefield or execution-style by Emily Blunt (by the way – she is a badass mofo in this movie; far from the Emily from The Devil Wears Prada), who knows what’s going on and understands that he’ll have to be “reset” over and over until he is a super-soldier and/or knows what has to be done. The setpieces of the invasion are thrilling to experience and almost feel like something out of Saving Private Ryan at times. It is definitely a Groundhog Day experience as well as Cruise does start to figure things out, all the while spending what probably feels like an eternity for him to do so. Luckily for us it’s not that long. 
There’s a thrilling conclusion…and then an ending set of scenes that kept me from walking out of the theater all abuzz from a great sci-fi movie. Frankly, I’m perplexed at what happened and it’s left a bad taste in my mouth for this movie. For those who don’t want to be spoiled, it’s time for you to leave…..
SPOILER ALERT BELOW
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I’ve attached a link below to an article that does a pretty good job of recapping the time-travel conceit introduced in the movie; it also does a serviceable job of trying to explain how to explain the ending might make sense….
http://screenrant.com/edge-of-
But you know what? Even this well-written article ultimately has the author throw his hands up in the air and go, “well, who knows?” I can’t understand how (remember, SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!) after the Omega dies, Tom Cruise (who died killing the Omega) gets covered in Omega-goo and gets sent back in time, once again, but further back to before he was labeled a deserter and still held his Major rank. When I first was watching this scene, I was excited to think that perhaps the movie was going to present us with the fact that nothing ended and the invasion yet again was on (after getting over my dismay that the movie had decided to not end heroically and tragically).
It would have been a crazy event as now Tom Cruise knew exactly where the Omega lived. He was also going to be talking face-to-face with the General – and the movie could then be about him convincing the General of this and ….well, who knows?! Because that’s not what happened, as shortly after, you see a news conference that indicates the Omega still was dead and the alien soldiers weren’t putting up a fight. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? Any of it? It makes no sense. And I hate that because the movie had built time-travel rules that mostly made sense, in the world that it built. But this ending really smacks of a studio saying, “this movie needs a real happy ending!” and that the two lead characters need to be alive. And sure enough, not only Emily Blunt and Tom Cruise are alive, all the other soldiers who’d bravely perished were back! Yay! I can’t shake that off. What had been a really interesting time-travel action/war movie just made some shit up, likely expecting us to just go with, Tom Cruise gets “Omega-powers” which are WAY better than crappy “Alpha-powers”. UGH.
END SPOILER ALERT
So yeah, the ending of Edge of Tomorrow was a bit of a bridge-too-far for me. If I ignore that part I’d easily rank it high on my summer movie 2014 listing, and recommend it whole-heartedly. As it is though? I’d recommend it for the 95% of the rest of the movie and hope you enjoy it despite the ending – I think Larry is in the camp who got over it and enjoyed it nevertheless. Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt are fantastic in their roles and honestly, the whole of the rest of the movie is superb. Really!
My Summer Movie Rankings, Thus Far! (as of June 8, 2014)
- X-Men: Days of Future Past
- Godzilla
- Edge of Tomorrow
- A Million Ways to Die in the West