Last night I watched the Tom Cruise movie \u201cEdge of Tomorrow.\u201d\u00a0 The first thing that strikes me is that it is a sort of mixture of things.<\/p>\n
First off, it\u2019s a mil sci-fi movie.\u00a0 It tells the story of aliens invading and battling humans.\u00a0 Almost the entire movie takes place within the confines of a single battlefield.\u00a0 And because it\u2019s a big budget movie with a big star that part is done rather professionally.\u00a0 The special effects and sets are very good looking.\u00a0 The action takes place in England and France and Germany so there is the interest of seeing The Louvre and London engulfed in military paraphernalia and smashed by battle.\u00a0 So, there\u2019s all that.<\/p>\n
Next, it\u2019s a time travel story.\u00a0 The gimmick is that Tom Cruise has been caught up in the gears of the aliens\u2019 ability to alter the future.\u00a0 Because of a chain of events involving his lucky killing of a high level alien, Cruise is effected in such a way that every time he gets killed in battle, it resets time back to the start of the day of the battle he\u2019s in.\u00a0 But when he returns to that day he remembers each of these past lives.\u00a0 It\u2019s sort of like Bill Murray\u2019s character in Groundhog\u2019s Day.\u00a0 So, even though he\u2019s a complete neophyte to combat, he can learn from what happened to him on the previous incarnations.\u00a0 Comically, after countless iterations he can effortlessly step through the battlefield performing a choreographed dance with death.\u00a0 Of course, this means to keep advancing his progress on the battlefield he has to keep dying over and over again.<\/p>\n
So, in a way, it\u2019s also a metaphor for, or even a parody of someone playing a first-person shooter video game.\u00a0 You keep playing the game and increasing your knowledge and skills.\u00a0 You also have to die over and over and over.\u00a0 And for anyone who has spent a lot of time playing one particular game you understand the psychologically painful experience of building up the necessary muscle memory and rote memorization of the endless sequences of motions and thought processes needed to wend your way to the next level.\u00a0 That\u2019s the feel this movie provides.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll have to say it\u2019s a mixed experience.\u00a0 It\u2019s both stimulating to sense the iterative advancement and at the same time irritating.\u00a0 There\u2019s one particular sequence that occurs almost endlessly during the movie.\u00a0 It\u2019s when he\u2019s awakened by a sergeant screaming abuse into his face.\u00a0 It must happen at least two dozen times.\u00a0 By the end of the movie I\u2019m genuinely hoping Cruise just clocks him in the face, just to shut him up.<\/p>\n
So, does the movie work?\u00a0 Yes, it does.\u00a0 The initial introduction to Cruise\u2019s character presents him as an unlikeable jerk.\u00a0 By the end of the movie he has had to grow.\u00a0 There\u2019s even, believe it or not, the elements of a love story in the tale.\u00a0 And, Lord help me, I know how ridiculous that seems in the context of a war movie.<\/p>\n
Who is this movie for?\u00a0 If you\u2019re a Tom Cruise fan and you liked him in War of the Worlds and Minority Report you\u2019ll probably like this movie a lot.\u00a0 If you\u2019re a mil sci-fi fan I think you\u2019ll probably enjoy it.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t like science fiction or war movies you will hate this.\u00a0 And if you\u2019re neutral on Tom Cruise, sci-fi and war movies I think it\u2019s 50\/50.\u00a0 It\u2019s a good sci-fi movie and provides solid entertainment.\u00a0 But it isn\u2019t \u201cGone with the Wind\u201d so if you\u2019re looking for highly cerebral or morally meaningful move on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last night I watched the Tom Cruise movie \u201cEdge of Tomorrow.\u201d\u00a0 The first thing that strikes me is that it is a sort of mixture<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,237,243],"tags":[43,38,44,264,289],"class_list":["post-1342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-reviews","category-sff-movie-reviews","tag-movie-review","tag-review","tag-sci-fi","tag-time-travel","tag-tom-cruise"],"yoast_head":"\n