U51 LO1 Task 1 and 2

Film:
Edge of Tomorrow 2014
Reviews:
Empire - http://www.empireonline.com/movies/edgetomorrow/review/
On the face of it, there is nothing particularly original about Edge Of
Tomorrow. Brush your hand across its gritty surface and youll smear the
thin layer off a teeming nest of influences: Groundhog Day, the most
obvious, for its time-loop plot engine (and by extension Source Code);
Saving Private Ryan, for its French-beach brutality; Aliens, Starship
Troopers and the Matrix trilogy for its bombastic portrayal of big-tech
conflict with multi-limbed, insectoid-biomechanical extra-terrestrials. Its
exquisitely apposite that, if youre coming to this film from a healthy
upbringing on action-sci-fi cinema of the 80s and 90s (with Harold Ramis
clock-resetting comedy being the one rom-com it was okay for you to
love), youll experience a throbbing sense of dj vu only made more
acute by the films shared chromosomes with last years Elysium and that
other Tom Cruise-on-a-devastated-Earth picture, Oblivion.
None of which is to diminish Empires recommendation: director Doug
Liman and his screenwriting triumvirate of Christopher McQuarrie and
brothers Jez and John-Henry Butterworth (adapting Hiroshi Sakurazakas
light novel All You Need Is Kill) wear all these influences well, and with
pride. Why else enlist the ever-reliable Bill Paxton as a puff-chested,
adage-chewing sergeant if not to wink at his past life as a colonial marine?
Edge Of Tomorrow may be hugely familiar, but welcomingly so. And it also
proves to be huge fun.
This is in no small part to the movies most significant influence of all:
video games. While we still await an even remotely decent video game-tomovie adaptation, Edge Of Tomorrow provides the perfect substitute. It
may not have spawned directly from any console-based IP, but it is
thoroughly steeped in gaming culture and logic mainly via Sakurazaka
himself, who is also a programmer. Lay the films plot over a game-design
template and youll find a pleasingly neat match. When Cage (Cruise)
awakens into the first day of his enforced demotion (also the second-tolast of his life), he is effectively starting from a save point. When,
eventually, a close encounter on that bloody beach with a tentacle-flailing,
blast-furnace mouthed alpha the end-of-level boss causes his
health bar to retract to zero, we snap back to that save point, and he must
play the two days again. With each replay, he must learn how to survive
to reach the next level (to ultimately meet the end-of-game boss),

although, paradoxically, just as we learn from our mistakes in life, he must

learn from his deaths. (If youve ever sunk days of playtime into a Dark
Souls game, youre guaranteed to sympathise.)
Part of this is through his power of recollection, plus development of
muscle-memory: step left to avoid explosion here, shoot right to eliminate
incoming mimic there every repeated battle is pre-programmed, so he
just has to learn the patterns. Then part of it is through a more
straightforward regime of personal improvement or levelling up
which comes via Cage unlocking new content. Having mastered the
timing of a roll between a trucks wheels in one amusing and novel
sequence, he is rewarded with access to a trainer (Emily Blunt as
seasoned soldier Rita Vrataski) who not only provides him with the
necessary information to progress to new levels, but also enables him to
spend his experience points in her automated dojo.
If this all sounds as mechanical as the exo-suits Cage and his comrades
wear, dont be put off. McQuarrie and the Butterworths have crafted a rich
and drily witty script that really takes the edges off the concept.
Seemingly throwaway lines accrue layers of meaning as Cage relives, and
relives, these two days. Battle is a true redeemer, barks Paxtons sarge
at his men; tomorrow morning you will be baptised. Born again. A little
later, just before being dropped into the hotzone, a fellow grunt yells at
Cage, the raw recruit, I think theres something wrong with your suit...
Yeah, theres a dead man in it! So true.
The writers have fun with the whole death-to-progress concept, too. Once
Blunts combat-hardened Rita joins Cage in his quest, it becomes her job
to press quit when things go wrong by shooting Cage through the
head. Also, after the plots loopy logic is firmly established (which, like any
time-travel movie, raises more questions than it provides answers), they
employ it to maintain tension: how much does Cage know? Has he been
through this scenario before? Its deliberately never clear just how many
lives hes already gone through to get to any given scene. It is a shame
that the deaths themselves arent allowed to have more impact. In a
previous era, this would have been a 15-to-18-certificate movie that would
not have shied away from presenting Cages many and varied demises,
gore and all. But the commercial pressure to audience-broaden has
required Liman to cut away as much as possible, and a visual sense of
trauma is lost.
Still, Cruise sells it brilliantly. Indeed, this is his strongest performance in
some time and he revels in the characters development. He starts out as
a smug, smirking, weaselly coward, not above trying to blackmail an
implacable general (Brendan Gleeson); Cage is so ineffectual, he cant
even switch off the safety on his hand-cannons. During his first drop he
stumbles lamely about, watching his comrades die in the dirt, doing little
useful to help them. But battle is a true redeemer, of course. So gradually,

gradually, the weasel becomes a lion. Although not without a self-serving

detour or two along the way.
Blunt, too, is on strong form, exhibiting a steely poise that makes her
comfortably believable as a war-propaganda poster-girl known
simultaneously as The Angel Of Verdun and Full Metal Bitch. She is less a
romantic interest for Cruise (who seems to be going through an English
actress co-star phase) than she is his mentor, and his foil. Doug Liman has
always been an astute, experimental chemist, and while this isnt quite
the Brad-and-Angie lab explosion of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, its at least as
strong a pairing as Matt Damon and Franka Potente in The Bourne Identity
(which, incidentally, is another movie this comes to echo during one later
episode particularly).
After the forgettable Jumper and Fair Game, its good to see Liman back
on pyrotechnic form, orchestrating some inventive combat spectacle. This
could well be his biggest hit yet and Cruises for a good while, too. A
rebirth, of a sort, for both of them. If nothing else, itll stand out as one of
summer 2014s most entertaining surprises.

Screen Rant - http://screenrant.com/edge-of-tomorrowreviews/

In Edge of Tomorrow, mankind is under siege by alien invaders known
as The Mimics, who have the unique ability to reset the day, giving
them a precognitive edge that makes defeating their hordes virtually
impossible. Enter Major William Cage (Tom Cruise), smarmy face of the
militarys public relations propaganda campaign. When ordered to
broadcast from the front lines, Cage refuses, fearing disaster; that
decision to go AWOL gets him thrown into the ranks of combat soldiers
against his will, on the day of a massive D-Day-style assault, no less.
When Cage gets to the battle, its more hellish than he ever imagined as
is his subsequent death battling a particularly formidable Mimic. However,
death is not the end: upon his gruesome demise, Cage wakes up back at
the start of his last day. After stumbling through a few death cycles, he is
tasked with making contact with legendary soldier Rita Vrataski (Emily
Blunt), the only person who seems to understand whats happening to
him. Under Ritas harsh tutelage, Cage lives (and dies) the same day
countless times over as he trains to be a smarter and more deadly warrior
one who can hopefully unlock the secret of the Mimics power, and
defeat them once and for all.
Tagged as being Groundhog Day meets Starship Troopers, Edge of
Tomorrow is, at its core, a particularly slick and efficiently executed scifi/action B-movie. The end result is another good film from Cruise, one
that actually downplays his celebrity persona in all the right ways,
allowing a (semi-)interesting character story to drive the proceedings.
While the movie arguably doesnt go far enough with some of the ideas

and/or story beats it introduces, its unique stylistic approach to the

material makes the experience an overall satisfying one.
Bourne Identity director Doug Liman manages to bring an imaginative,
polished and kinetic sci-fi action movie to life onscreen and then
distinguishes it with stylistic choices and clever edits that make the most
of the Groundhog Day premise. The repetition of certain shots and/or
scenes is deftly handled and serves the story without ever becoming
cumbersome, gimmicky or overused which is really a feat in and of itself.
Visually, the film is a nice mix of washed-out and vibrant color palettes,
which reflect (respectively) the grounded and gritty dystopian near-future,
and more colorful and fantastical manga/anime tropes pulled from the All
You Need Is Kill source novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. (Technical Note:
Forget 3D, its not worth the muted colors.)
The sci-fi elements of the film like the exoskeleton battle armor and
weaponry, or the Mimic aliens are all well realized (and rendered)
onscreen. The Mimics in particular are a unique (and frightening) concept
for an enemy and overall, the action sequences in the film are thrilling,
entertaining and refreshingly different from the norm. Thanks to a good
script, each moment of action or violence has weight, relevance and
surprisingly enough, often humor as well.
Limans visual narrative makes the most out of a nice script by Fair
Game writers John-Henry and Jez Butterworth; but it is the distinctive
touch of Usual Suspects writer (and frequent Cruise collaborator)
Christopher McQuarrie that gives Edge of Tomorrow its edge. Morbidly
clever writing, witty use of repetition and well-staged comedic gags work
in tandem to lace the film with a sardonic humor mined from the day
repetition process -and that humor ultimately helps to sell Cages
evolution, as well as his connection with Rita in an unorthodox but
effectively understated manner.
An admitted downside of the film is the fact that the relationship aspect of
the story (the core of Groundhog Day, as it were) feels truncated and
somewhat undercooked. It is a tricky blend to begin with (a love story in
the midst of a war story), but in the end, a lot of the more interesting
ideas and/or moments of Cage and Ritas connection are left to
implication or exposition, and that loose thread nearly unravels the ending
of the film. Of course, the emotional depth is cut shallow to keep the
movie trimmed to a lean 112 minutes of run-and-gun action; however
(and as is a growing trend this summer) there is the sense that the
efficient pacing comes at the cost of a richer (albeit longer) cinematic
experience.
As stated, Cruise is once again solid in his leading man role, at first
mocking his own star persona (Cage is a bit of a celebrity prima donna),
then underplaying it as he makes the journey from selfish coward to
selfless hero. The role actually makes more use of Cruises range than

usual, drawing on his signature physicality and dramatic intensity, but

also drawing heavily on his comedic wit and timing, which has become
something of a rarity to see.
Emily Blunt is all grit beauty and grace (that yoga shot will live on
forever), and she turns out to be a surprisingly good foil for Cruise,
adopting a deadpan frankness that sells much of the grim humor in Cage
and Ritas interactions. Again, there is a sense that there was more to
Blunts character and performance (perhaps somewhere on the cutting
room floor?), as Rita ultimately comes off as underdeveloped which is
unfortunate, because the character is worthy of more than the broad
brushstrokes and vague inferences we get.
Along the way, we are treated to some welcome character cameos from
the likes of an animated Bill Paxton (who chews on a few scenes, a few
times over) and a stone-faced Brendan Gleeson (who gets some of the
best cutaway gags). We also meet a likable enough roundup of grunts
played by European/Aussie actors like Jonas Armstrong (Robin Hood), Tony
Way (Game of Thrones), Kick Gurry (Offspring), Franz Drameh (Attack the
Block), Dragomir Mrsic (real-life former bank robber), Charlotte Riley
(Entity) and Masayoshi Haneda (47 Ronin) with Terence Maynards (Spy)
face likely to be burned into your brain. (Hes this movies version of Ned
Ryerson for those who get the reference.)
In the end, Edge of Tomorrow is impressive enough for what it is, with
trace hints that it couldve been something a little bit greater, had the
filmmakers chosen to delve even deeper into their characters and story.
As it stands, the uniqueness of the time reset premise and sci-fi action
distinguish the film from so many others in the genre, and it is at least
worth a matine viewing on the big screen. All in all, another worthwhile
stop on the Tom Cruise comeback train.

Rolling Stone http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/reviews/edge-oftomorrow-20140605

It shouldn't work. A human-versus-aliens epic that keeps repeating the
same scene over and over again as if the comic tilt of Groundhog Day had
turned suddenly dangerous. But Edge of Tomorrow will keep you on edge.
Guaranteed.
Tom Cruise had me at hello, playing Maj. William Cage, a glorified PR guy
in uniform. During an interview with hawklike Gen. Brigham (Brendan
Gleeson, chewing hungrily on a tasty role), Cage is condescending as hell,
offering to help the general with his image in a war that seems
unwinnable. Instead, the general sends the combat-unready Cage into
battle. Effective immediately.

It's a treat to watch the typically heroic Cruise lose his shit, sweating and
panicking at the thought of getting up close and personal with an alien
race called Mimics. Cage, buried in combat armor and handed weapons no
one has trained him to use, goes kicking and screaming into the alien fray,
crying foul to his commanding officer (Bill Paxton). Yet there he is on a
beach in France, ducking CGI creatures that look truly terrifying and
staring in horror as Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), a military goddess, is
massacred. Cage dies next.
You heard me. He dies. Until director Doug Liman, channeling the
cinematic pizazz he brought to The Bourne Identity, hits the reset button.
Cage is forced to relive that same day until he gets it right. That means
getting to Rita before the battle in question, persuading her to train him
for combat and then, of course, falling in love. The cornball stuff never
gets in the way, thanks to Blunt's grit and grace. She's a force of nature.
Working from an exuberantly clever script that Christopher McQuarrie
(The Usual Suspects) and Jez and John-Henry Butterworth adapted from
Hiroshi Sakurazaka's 2004 novel All You Need Is Kill, Liman keeps the
action and surprises coming nonstop. OK, the end is a head-scratcher.
Until then, Cruise and Blunt make dying a hugely entertaining game of
chance.

Plugged In - http://www.pluggedin.com/moviereviews/edge-of-tomorrow/
Major Bill Cage isn't a muscle-bound hero type. In fact, he's always been
more of a behind-the-desk kind of soldier. He's a former advertising guy
who feels more comfortable creating PR videos and great-sounding press
releases for the six o'clock news. But storming a beach with a rifle in
hand? Ha. Not quite.
So when General Brigham suggests Cage and his camera crew be
embedded in an upcoming military surge, all the major can do is try not to
laugh out loud.
I mean, com'on! Yes, this war against the alien hordes has been raging on
for a long, long time. And, yes, the public probably does need something
to bolster moral, especially after nearly all of Europe got gobbled up. But
there ain't a chance Major Bill Cage is gonna go out there into the middle
of it all, never mind direct orders.
Why, he can't even stand the sight of blood, particularly his own. So if this
general guy thinks he's going to threaten and harangue him out to the
front lines, well, Cage'll just have to start doing some threatening of his
own. After all, he's got the skills to pin the blame for a failing war effort on
anyone he pleases. So a certain, ahem, general had better watch his
words.
Just like that, Cage is arrested, stripped of rank and slapped in chains

 and he wakes to find himself in a staging area at London's Heathrow

Airport.
He'll be going out with the forces the next day after all, it seems. But
instead of being an officer on a special mission, he'll be just another grunt
strapped into one of those new exoskeleton weapon thingies. In other
words, he'll be a dead man.
Indeed, when the next day's battle arrives, Cage hits the beach landing
point and starts running for his life. He can't even figure out how to switch
the safety off on his suit-mounted guns. He's a sitting duck, and he's dead
within five minutes.
Just before the end arrives, though, through sheer luck, Cage does
manage to release that safety and let some firepower loose on one of
those larger, more threatening Alpha creatures in the alien pack. The two
of them, man and beast, die together, their blood mingling
and Cage wakes to find himself in a staging area at Heathrow.
Wait a minute. Or maybe wait a whole day! Didn't this already happen? It
seems so familiar. The barking sergeant, the prep for battle. And before
you know it, Cage is right back out there on the beach, running for his life.
Of course he knows where the safety switch is this time. And he fairs a bit
better. For a little while longer. You know, maybe six minutes. Then he dies
again
and wakes up in a staging area at Heathrow.
Three, four, five, 105 times. Waking, prepping, dropping and dying. Over
and over, Cage keeps going through the same 30-hour loop. Like some
kind of long-play iPod tune stuck on repeat. A killer case of deja vu.
Waking, prepping, dropping and dying.
Each time, though, he learns something new. And he starts to figure out
how to outthink the patterns, how to break them. He knows where the
bombs will blow and where the creatures will leap. And he keeps getting
farther up the beach before
he wakes up at Heathrow.
Then he runs into Rita Vrataski. She's the Angel of Verdun, the only soldier
to actually lead a successful surge against the attacking aliens. Cage
saves her life, if you can believe it. He had seen the creatures attack Rita
before he dies during a previous cycle. So he steps right up and blasts
them this time as they emerge from hiding.
After Cage moves through his list of pinpoint precision kills, Rita looks at
him with a slack jaw. Is it a look of recognition? Does she know something
he doesn't? And just before the transport blows up next to them she says,
"Find me when you wake up."

POSITIVE ELEMENTS
Cage does find Rita after he wakes at Heathrow, and their partnership sets
him on a slow path to becoming a better soldier and a better man. As time
goes on (or doesn't, as the case may be), we see him and others giving
their all to battle their relentless foe, fighting fearlessly for those around
them. Cage grows to selflessly love Rita, and he becomes committed to
doing absolutely anything to find a way to save her along with all of
mankind. He's not alone in that later goal: A number of soldiers are willing
to stand fast in hopeless situations to further that aim.
Though Rita doesn't remember the many looped days that Cage knows,
she soon comes to immediately re-recognize his blossoming goodness and
trustworthiness.

SEXUAL CONTENT
Cage slyly talks to Rita about somehow transferring the alien DNA (the
time-looping substance that found its way into his bloodstream) from one
human to another through bodily fluids. She catches on that he's
suggesting they have sex and quickly shuts him down, letting him know
that she's tried it before and it doesn't work.
Somebody makes a coarse crack about hooking up with two girls at once.
Rita wears a flak vest that reveals quite a bit of her bare back. A soldier
suits up in his mech armor without his uniform, allowing the camera to
catch a glimpse of his bare backside. Several guys are seen shirtless in
their barracks.

VIOLENT CONTENT
Blasting, pummeling images of war, its dead and dying clutter the screen.
And because of the looping/time-travel conceit, some characters
particularly Cage and Ritaare seen being killed over and over and over
again, each death a slight variation of the last.
Those deaths include percussive explosions, impalements from creature
tentacles, and images of our heroes being strafed by shrapnel and banged
by large mechanical devices and vehicles. A number of times we see one
or the other of them lying prone, dead with a glazed-over expression.
As Rita quickly tries to train Cage and bring him up to speed as a soldier,
he's battered relentlesslybones routinely breaking. In each case it's
recognized that Cage must "die" in order to restart the day and thus get
on with the important training process, so Rita casually shoots him in the
head whenever he's hurt. (We generally see her point the gun at the
camera and pull the trigger.)

Quantities of people die in huge explosions. A guy is crushed (several

times) by a gigantic crashing transport plane. An airborne vessel blows up
in repeated loops, burning soldiers and sucking them out through a hole
torn in the craft's side. Swirling tentacled creatures (called Mimics) grab
and throw men and women around like crumpled wads of paper. A man
detonates a Mimic with a Claymore land mine held to his chest between
them. Two soldiers use a Claymore to destroy a fuel truck, enveloping
themselves and a number of the aliens in an eruption of flame and
shrapnel. Machine guns and RPGs do their share of damage. A man is
knocked out by a Taser and run over by a truck. Rita wields a large sword,
using it to hack into the Mimics on a regular basis. Cage is dragged a long
distance, dangling outside a fast-moving craft by one arm. He slams a
multi-needled transponder device into his leg.

CRUDE OR PROFANE LANGUAGE

In the heat of battle, one (unfinished) f-word and four or five s-words are
joined by a handful each of "a--," "b--ch," "b-llocks" and "b--tard." God's
name is misused three or four times (once with "d--n"), Christ's twice. We
repeatedly see posters of Rita that sport the slogan "Full Metal B--ch."

DRUG AND ALCOHOL CONTENT

Cage drinks a beer at a bar.

OTHER NEGATIVE ELEMENTS

Cage's repeated deaths are sometimes played for laughs.

CONCLUSION
While at the screening for this Tom Cruise actioner, I overheard someone
say that Edge of Tomorrow was sort of a combination of the romcom
fantasy Groundhog Day and the sci-fi blaster Starship Troopers. And that's
likely to be the type of cinematic comparisons many will make. But this pic
is neither as lightheartedly silly as the former flick, nor as gruesomely
splattering as the latter.
What we have here is a well-crafted, well-acted, explosive chunk of
summer entertainment. The film captures the broad spirit of the Japanese
light and graphic novels (All You Need Is Kill) it's based on, telling the story
of a guy who starts out fearful and self-centered, then reshapes himself
into a bona fide hero willing to do anything to protect those he loves. He
does this, of course, by reliving a repeating loop of painful preparation and
devastating war.
There's a love story at play here, too. But it's an unrequited love that
Major Cage feels. As he joins in the battles beside the hard-fighting Rita,
he starts to learn more and more about her and come to care for the

woman behind the warrior. While for Rita, it's always their first day
together.
Edge of Tomorrow tries hard to keep the most grisly and gory things on
the battlefield out of the camera's view, but Cage's repeated visits to the
same war-torn beach landing is still intense. Cage and almost all of his
compatriots are crushed, battered, thrown and blasted repeatedly
crushed, battered, thrown and blasted repeatedly crushed, battered,
thrown and blasted repeatedly.
Taking things one step further into the "hell of war," the idea of Rita
herself doing the "honors" of killing him during training each time he's
injured brushes up uncomfortably close to the real-life moral quandary of
thinking death might be a path toward "solving" our problems or
merely thinking of it too casually.
Amid that, though, this is unquestionably a tale of bravery. It's a movie
that clearly tells us there are things worth fighting for. That there are
those worth protecting. That even the meekest among us can make a
difference if we reach far enough and try hard enough to do what's right.
Those are all things we need to hear over and over again.

The Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jun/01/edge-oftomorrow-review-tom-cruise-emily-blunt-born-againblockbuster

Anyone who watches a lot of blockbuster cinema soon hardens to the
familiarity of most product, to the relentless recycling of the same handful
of once-decent ideas. So the new Spider-Man series looks like the
old Spider-Man series; the new Godzilla reboot is better than the
old Godzillareboot, but came too soon after Pacific Rim, which was
just Godzilla with robots. You find yourself getting weary and jaded, and
asking as showbiz agents do with a yawn in the old movies so, what
else ya got?
Well, here's an interesting something else. The new Tom
Cruise showcase, Edge of Tomorrow, represents an ingenious admission
that, while there's nothing new under the sun of genre cinema, recycling
can still be creative and that, if you're going to do it, you might as well do
it blatantly. At first sight, Edge of Tomorrow is only too routine. Humans
going to war in robotic exoskeletons? Seen it as long ago as Aliens and
countless times since. A man stuck in a time loop, fated to relive the same
action endlessly? Seen it in Groundhog Day.
As for the formula 'Aliens meets Groundhog Day' that's surely flogging
two dead horses at once. But because Edge of Tomorrow is effectively

about the infinite refloggability of cinematic horses, it manages to break

the chain of formulaic repetition and come out surprisingly fresh.
The film is reliant on well-placed surprises, so here I'll plant a neon-lit
SPOILER ALERT! and let you take your chances. So: in the near future,
Earth faces an extraterrestrial invasion force of wildly flailing metallic
octopus things. American officer William Cage (Tom Cruise) finds himself
reduced to the ranks and dispatched to the front line; he's actually an
adman in charge of military PR, so when he's sent into battle under Bill
Paxton's beaming headbanger sergeant, he's hopelessly out of his depth.
The initial combat scenes, with hardware crashing from the skies and
Cage palpably terrified, are intense, chaotic stuff: here's a rare sci-fi battle
epic that tells you from the off that war isn't actually much fun.
The twist: Cage is killed in battle but, because of a mysterious time loop,
finds himself repeatedly sent back to the field to relive the same
moments. He keeps getting killed over again, but learns some survival
tricks along the way, thanks to super-soldier Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt),
the poster girl for the war effort. The trick each time is to get further in the
battle before returning to your starting point. In Beckettian terms, "Fail
again. Fail better." More mundanely, it's just like a video game.
It's a good 20 years since people noticed that Hollywood action movies
were following the lead of Nintendo in both look and structure. Edge of
Tomorrow refreshes that familiar notion and takes it a little further, a little
more consistently, and a lot more self-consciously than most films. James
Herbert's editing throws us in and out of the action, forever bringing us
back to zero with a jerk but with rhythmic variations, so that we don't hit
the same points of the loop every time. Director Doug Liman (The Bourne
Identity, Mr and Mrs Smith) is astute at judging when the conceit is
wearing thin, and when to open up surprising new pockets of action in the
timeline.
Edge of Tomorrow is also different in casting Cruise not as his usual hyperathletic grinner, but as a hapless and initially unlikable dork. His Cage only
starts to become competent, and redeemable, thanks to rigorous
instruction from Blunt's Vrataski, the film's real warrior icon. Feminist scifi? Only up to a point: by the end, Cage has at least levelled with Vrataski
in the hardnut stakes, but while he's flapping about cluelessly, it's a lot of
fun to see Cruise looking halfway human for a change.
Based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka's novel All You Need Is Kill, the film is a little
more prestigious than your routine blockbuster. The intricate, knowing
script is credited to Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) and to
esteemed British playwright Jez Butterworth and his brother John-Henry
Butterworth. Add cinematographer Dion Beebe, a collaborator of Michael
Mann and Jane Campion, and leading effects whiz Nick Davis, and there's
some distinctive clout here.

While hardly a game-changer, Edge of Tomorrow reworks its old tropes

with wit and brio. Given the weary complacency with which most
commercial cinema settles for its own second-handedness, it's a pleasure
to see a film so utterly brazen about its own derivative nature. It almost
makes you want to see if they can pull off a sequel Edge of Tomorrow 2:
Seen It All Before.