This is a time loop movie. It’s Groundhog Day crossed with Starship Troopers.
(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)
Tom Cruise is Major William Cage. He’s the US Army’s public relations man during a war against aliens called the mimics who have conquered mainland Europe and are about to be counter-attacked by humanity’s attempt at D-Day from a London staging area. But instead of staying behind in an office to edit commercials his superiors have loaned him out to the Brits as a warrior. He tries to desert but is handcuffed and handed over to Master Sargeant Farell (played by Bill Paxton) and put into powered body armor and dropped into battle in France. And of course, since he’s not a real soldier, he’s killed in the first few minutes of the horrific battle. But right before he dies, he manages to kill a special mimic called an “alpha.” And because some of the alpha’s blood gets on him, he ends up in a time loop that always brings him back to the same day of the battle. And as long as he’s always killed he’ll come back again.
And from starting out as a hopelessly incompetent soldier, by virtue of getting to endlessly re-live and re-die on that day, he becomes adept at fighting mimics. During one of these replays, he meets Sergeant Rita Vrataski (played by Emily Blunt) and just before she dies, she tells him to find her the next time he wakes up. In other words, she has had the same time loop ability. Through endless additional replays, Cage and Vrataski figure out that the mimics are aware of all the humans’ plans and fighting them is futile. But if Cage is exposed to a device that was made to read the mind of alphas he will discover where the head mimic (the omega) is hiding. But in the effort Cage loses his ability to reset time and come back to life.
And so, there is a kamikaze mission with Cage, Vrataski and some comrades to storm the Louvre where the monster hides. As it works out everyone but Cage is killed and he is mortally wounded just as he blows up the omega. But somehow killing the omega (I think) resets his looping ability and he wakes up with all of them alive but the omega destroyed and the mimics basically defeated.
Alright, so what about all this. This is a pretty good sci-fi war movie. The special effects are good. The acting is good and the plot is pretty well worked out. And even Emily Blunt’s Rita Vrataski character isn’t a complete girl-boss super hero. She is annoying from time to time but not hopelessly. Cruise carries the movie with a decent amount of character acting from his “comrades” and with even a little humor thrown in to lighten the mood. The endless live/die repetition is handled very well for most of the movie with only a couple of spots where they seemed to over do it. I will say that in the final assault the image on the screen is sort of too dark and hard to really understand. It’s at night in an underground vault and under water so maybe that’s realistic but it feels confusing and unhelpful to the viewer. All in all, I recommend this movie to fans of sci-fi action movies. It’s pretty good.