“Edge of Tomorrow” – Groundhog Day All Over Again

The space invaders have already conquered Europe. Humans hope to stop them with a reprise of the D-Day landings – complete with paratroopers (though using bungee cords rather than ‘chutes).

Major Cage (played by Tom Cruise*) is an effete PR officer who, before D-Day, meets with the commanding general – and is brusquely told he’ll be sent into combat. Why? It’s never explained.

Just one of the things that don’t make sense in this 2014 sci-fi action movie, Edge of Tomorrow. Another is that any aliens capable of reaching Earth would be so technologically advanced that our battling them would be ridiculous (more so using a WWII playbook). (Am I too didactic?)

Cage is a pussy who tries to squirm out of his reassignment. But next thing you know, he wakes up in handcuffs, demoted to a combat unit en route to the D-Day beach, where they’re all killed in minutes.

End of story? No, Cage wakes up again in handcuffs. Seems he’d gotten a splash of some special alien blood that puts him in a time loop, reliving the previous day over and over. He soon teams up with Rita, a hero woman warrior; and with each repeat of the sequence (often via her killing him to reset the loop), learning from his mistakes, he ups their game.

How is this not a total rip-off of Groundhog Day?

By the way, the title, Edge of Tomorrow, just lays there. Its “tag-line” – Live. Die. Repeat – would have made a far better title. But what do I know? I’m no highly paid Hollywood marketing maven.

Cage and Rita realize that the alien “soldiers” (good special effects on those weirdies!) are mere extensions of the “omega,” a central mind thingie whose destruction would be a coup de grace. Isn’t it always something like that? The human commanders don’t get it; maybe they haven’t viewed enough of these movies, such as Pacific Rim (see my review. We watch them in order to provide you with droll reviews like this. I hope you appreciate it.)

Anyhow, Cage and Rita set out to find and kill the omega; with each death and resurrection, Cage gets closer to the goal. Then an unsought blood transfusion ends his ability to loop back. So now he has one last chance to complete the mission, the hard way.

The logic of all this seemed shaky – especially with the omega being able to “control time” (whatever that might actually mean). If you play with time, you get tangled up. Furthermore (and typically for such flicks – see my recent review of Transcendence), most of the denouement was shrouded in darkness, punctuated by a lot of shooting, explosions, and sound effects. I had little idea what was going on. (I later googled a plot summary to find out.)

My wife and I had a disagreement. She thought the problem was with our TV, and that had we seen the film in a theater, all would have been clear. Nonsense, said I. What do you think? (One critic did call the final sequence “visually murky.”)

The Omega (best I could tell)

Anyway (spoiler alert), the omega gets whacked (with hand grenades, I kid you not), and its army melts away. Cage gets a fresh dose of alien blood, dies, and loops back again to the previous day – this time into a world wherein the aliens’ defeat is already being celebrated. Huh? Wouldn’t that not have happened yet – ?

A triumphalist news announcement breathlessly declares that Russian and Chinese troops are sweeping across Europe.

“That’s nice,” I said to my wife. I wonder if the film-makers put in that line with a sense of irony. Seems doubtful.

*I’m no fan of Cruise, who fronts for Scientology – a crypto “religion” not only having doctrines sillier than the usual, but a ruthless predator upon hapless victims in its clutches – scarier than any of Cruise’s movies.