This is a time loop movie.\u00a0 It\u2019s Groundhog Day crossed with Starship Troopers.<\/p>\n
(Spoiler Alert \u2013 Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)<\/strong><\/p>\n Tom Cruise is Major William Cage.\u00a0 He\u2019s the US Army\u2019s 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\u2019s attempt at D-Day from a London staging area.\u00a0 But instead of staying behind in an office to edit commercials his superiors have loaned him out to the Brits as a warrior.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 And of course, since he\u2019s not a real soldier, he\u2019s killed in the first few minutes of the horrific battle.\u00a0 But right before he dies, he manages to kill a special mimic called an \u201calpha.\u201d\u00a0 And because some of the alpha\u2019s blood gets on him, he ends up in a time loop that always brings him back to the same day of the battle.\u00a0 And as long as he\u2019s always killed he\u2019ll come back again.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 In other words, she has had the same time loop ability.\u00a0 Through endless additional replays, Cage and Vrataski figure out that the mimics are aware of all the humans\u2019 plans and fighting them is futile.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 But in the effort Cage loses his ability to reset time and come back to life.<\/p>\n And so, there is a kamikaze mission with Cage, Vrataski and some comrades to storm the Louvre where the monster hides.\u00a0 As it works out everyone but Cage is killed and he is mortally wounded just as he blows up the omega.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n Alright, so what about all this.\u00a0 This is a pretty good sci-fi war movie.\u00a0 The special effects are good.\u00a0 The acting is good and the plot is pretty well worked out.\u00a0 And even Emily Blunt\u2019s Rita Vrataski character isn\u2019t a complete girl-boss super hero.\u00a0 She is annoying from time to time but not hopelessly.\u00a0 Cruise carries the movie with a decent amount of character acting from his \u201ccomrades\u201d and with even a little humor thrown in to lighten the mood.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I will say that in the final assault the image on the screen is sort of too dark and hard to really understand.\u00a0 It\u2019s at night in an underground vault and under water so maybe that\u2019s realistic but it feels confusing and unhelpful to the viewer.\u00a0 All in all, I recommend this movie to fans of sci-fi action movies.\u00a0 It\u2019s pretty good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is a time loop movie.\u00a0 It\u2019s Groundhog Day crossed with Starship Troopers. (Spoiler Alert \u2013 Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and<\/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":[239,237,4,243],"tags":[5160,640,639,43,265,264,289],"class_list":["post-36315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-movie-reviews","tag-bill-paxton","tag-emily-blunt","tag-military-science-fiction","tag-movie-review","tag-science-fiction","tag-time-travel","tag-tom-cruise"],"yoast_head":"\n