Last summer's epic action/science fiction movie, Edge of Tomorrow (or Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow), was one of my favorite movies of last year and I think it was the most underrated blockbuster film of last year and maybe the last five years. It was absolutely amazing. The basic premise is that a stuck-up officer in the US military with no field experience, played by Tom Cruise, gets dragged onto the front lines on the beaches of Normandy during a war with alien invaders. During the battle, this untrained man comes in contact with one of the leaders of the alien force and kills it. By doing so, he temporarily appropriates the being's ability to replay specific events until they end in a favorable way. For the rest of the movie Cruise's character continues to replay a series of events which begin with him waking up on the tarmac of a military installation. Every time he dies he wakes up to start all over again. He finds some help and is trained by a war hero, played by Emily Blunt, who had this same ability during a previous battle. They replay events trying to get them just right to destroy the brain of the alien force. It is essentially a hive mind. One mind controlling all the actions of its underlings. Eventually Cruise looses the ability and on the final attempt they travel to Paris and destroy the hive mind. Once again the day is reset and this time the aliens have been defeated and are retreating and on the run from the human military, with the original battle the movie is framed around never having taken place.
This movie is awesome. First off, Tom Cruise is at his absolute best in this movie. He plays a character who is completely reluctant to fight and doesn't want to be involved or be a hero, but as the film progresses he accepts his role, learns what he needs to, and eventually steps up to be the hero that he is needed to be. Furthermore, it would be really easy to play the same beats over and over again every time his day resets, but Cruise never does this. His reactions to situations are different every time and he uses his resets to learn valuable information that could help him in a later instance. The movie features dozens of these instances, but also hint that he has been waking up and dying over and over again, possibly hundreds of times. Cruise does an amazing job in this film and is completely believable. It may be his best role in an action movie besides Mission Impossible and Top Gun.
The breakout star of this film, and possibly my favorite part of it, was Emily Blunt. She has been in a few action movies over the years such as alongside Matt Damon in The Adjustment Bureau and alongside Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis in Looper, but in this film she stands completely on her own as a full fledged character and is real muscle in the movie. Excuse my french, but she is a complete bad-a## in this movie. Her character is the actual soldier with the incredible training and the experience needed to win the war. I honestly didn't really know who Emily Blunt was before this film, but I sure do now. She was fantastic. She played a wonderful character that immediately was taken seriously. Plus she was never marginalized to Tom Cruise. She was just as much the focal point as he was. If it hadn't been for her character nothing would have changed. She was great.
The rest of the cast for this movie was also spectacular. Many of the Cruise's companions were full fledged characters and were well developed. It helped that the frame of the movie, the repeating time frame, allowed for off-screen development which then could be quickly referenced in dialogue. Many of these characters you recognized and they were not just pawns. The funniest of these side characters was played by Bill Paxon. He was hilarious. Playing a pompous, condescending platoon commander, his back and forth banter with Tom Cruise injected humor into a very thoughtful film. He is not a lovable character to say the least and its fun to see how Cruise will outsmart him next, but his reactions to Cruise answering questions before they were even asked or repeating catchphrases before they were initially spoken was hilarious. He was a pleasant surprise in an already amazing movie.
I think part of the problem with why this film was so underrated and not widely popular was because of the advertising campaign and its title(s). It was never very clear what the title of the movie was and this continued into the dvd/vod release as well. The studio also did not do a good enough job advertising for this movie. I think they relied on the name draw of Tom Cruise way to much. Cruise is great, but he does not have the same instant draw that he once did. I would argue that a film franchise like Mission Impossible draws more because of that name recognition that because of Tom Cruise. Furthermore, I'm not sure how many people were completely familiar with Emily Blunt. I definitely wasn't, so relying on her own name recognition on the posters and in the trailers wasn't enough.
I think the biggest problem was the oversimplification of the film's premise by critiques and those talking about the film on TV. Critiques loved this film, as can be seen by its 80% rating on IMDB and its 90% rating on Rotten Tomatos, but they explained the premise as Groundhog Day but with aliens. I think this did the film a disservice. Groundhog Day is a great film but this comparison takes away the uniqueness of Edge of Tomorrow and makes it sound silly and gimmicky. The trailers tried to explain the point and plot of the film without giving too much away, and I think they did a good job of this. But the comparison to Groundhog Day was severely damaging. People who may have initially been interested turned away because they assumed it was going to be corny. The movie came in third on its opening weekend behind #2 Maleficent and #1 The Fault in Our Stars. It earned almost $20 million less than The Fault in Our Stars. Drawing only $100 million at the domestic box office in the US, this movie made less than arguably worse action films like Amazing Spider Man 2, X-Men Days of Future Past, Godzilla, and Divergent.
I have to admit that I did not originally see this movie in theaters. After seeing the trailer I wanted to, but then the comparisons to Groundhog Day came and I started to think of it as gimmicky. I said I was going to go, but I never did. That was a huge mistake. I finally saw the movie because the guys at Screen Junkies on YouTube kept saying how great it was. I decided I just had to see it and am so glad I did. It was the farthest thing from gimmicky and one of the most unique stories seen in an action movie in a long time. In a world filled with mountains of superhero films (which I absolutely LOVE), it was really nice seeing a piece of science fiction that was gritty and interesting and thought provoking that had me thinking and talking about it for days. I really with that I had seen this in theaters, but now I recommend this to anyone who is looking for something new and interesting to watch. This film was SO good and I would give it a rating of 9/10. It was by-far one of the BEST science-fiction films of 2014. If you haven't seen this movie, please do. You will not regret it.
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