Edge of Tomorrow

Already a classic that you will gladly reach for when you’re feeling down. A great screenplay which borrows just enough, combines what we like from Aliens, Starship Trooper (more faithful to Heinlein’s book than the movie) or Groundhog Day. Amazing production design (reminds me of the Crysis videogame), it’s dirty as the sand on the beaches in Normandy (70th anniversary, hip-hip). Tom manages to get round both the yellow-bellied coward and the killer machine and Emily Blunt plays a tom-boy women’s hero in Ripley style, Paxton was pleasing. Clever, funny and mainly an entertaining blockbuster which suited me the most this season so far. Get up, you worm! (06/05/2014)

So what did I like? That there was a sense of Japanese sparseness in the narration and portrayal of the characters. The action/drama was subtly diluted with humor, or a little romance, but nothing that made you roll your eyes. I didn't see a single American flag, didn't hear the American national anthem, and there wasn't even anyone giving stupid patriotic obnoxiously cliched speeches about how important it was to man up and go out and fight and that we're going to show these aliens what for and blah blah blah. It just wasn't there, and I cheered. Plus the characters were portrayed as people, with their own problems, their own histories, so they weren't just flat characters with a gun in their hands and some catchphrase. But what I liked best was the interplay between Cruise and Blunt, just a joy to watch. Granted, it did lose momentum towards the end and it felt like the film was squeezing out the last drops (but maybe I was squeezing out the last drops because the theater was sweltering), but it ended well and I left very satisfied in the end. This is exactly the blockbuster I wanted – an unpretentious film, and yet it has an engaging story, a quality cast, a decent OST, and action that wasn't shot with a shaky camera, so the viewer could see something and enjoy it too. Nice, and I have no choice but to say – keep it up. (06/05/2014)

The best thing would be not to praise this film and not to raise great expectations... The key asset of Edge of Tomorrow, after all, is not its grandiosity or action, as we would expect. Rather, Edge of Tomorrow is great thanks to its script, which is the most imaginative among blockbusters in a very, very long time. And thanks to its director (I bow down before him). In terms of entertainment value, dynamics and working with the viewer, the film practically has no faults and succeeds on every levels. From the balance of seriousness and humor in the perception of the (visually appealing) postapocalyptic world, through the retention of the audience’s attention by mean of an unpredictable plot that will glue you to your seat with its speed, all the way to the likable characters to whom you can relate, which you don’t see that much in blockbusters. Tom Cruise is just great, the character played by Emily Blunt is impossible not to fall in love with and the chemistry between them works without a hint of a romantic kitsch. Edge of Tomorrow is for playful post-apocalyptic sci-fi action movies what Children of Men is for thoughtful post-apocalyptic sci-fi dramas. (05/28/2014)

A magnificently filmed entertaining summer sci-fi blockbuster about the war between human and alien civilizations, in which the most affected person is a failed advertising manager who is condemned by the war situation to the role of a military propagandist and an unmanageable conflict with his superior to the position of an ordinary soldier. He is most affected because his fate is not to die once and for all, as soldiers die in battles, but thanks to a time loop he experiences the same day over and over again with the same bungled battle, which ends in a horrifying massacre, and he repeatedly dies in the most painful and bizarre ways. The morbid concept, however, thanks to irony, black humor, exaggeration, likable cast, and detachment, is easily digestible, and when I think about it, I can't find a reason why it shouldn't have the highest rating out of the original 4 stars. Tom Cruise is in his element as a blockbuster hero, and by being a coward and a guy who wants anything but to save the world, he is more likable than usual. But yes, criticism of the illogicality of the initial situation and the whole story is certainly appropriate, but honestly, who would want to dissect inconsistencies in the playfulness with a time paradox in such a relaxing genre? Some scenes definitely remind me of The Matrix or related genre productions, but that's just the way it goes in the crowded world of cinema, and I certainly wouldn't accuse Liman of cheap plagiarism. Overall impression: 90%. (07/03/2014)

This technological blockbuster, which in the long post-production process was given a coat by the special effects artists that models would die for, earns points mainly with the merciless thrill of the war. This war borrowed all over the place to wring out a surprisingly clever, pleasantly black-humored (headshots!) spectacle, which is only shattered by the skeleton's lack of a more driving conclusion to bring the film's entire video-game architecture to an absolute climax; otherwise, it's flawlessly acted, musically compelling, and directorially as confident as few in the genre in recent years. 4 ½. (09/06/2014)