Saturday, June 21, 2014

The Edge of Tomorrow

Sarah Connor meets Groundhog Day? Aliens have invaded earth (some fluke crashing of an infected asteroid) and have devastated Europe. Tom Cruise is a media officer in the army and gets thrown into the Normandy-like invasion of France when he gets caught in a time loop. While it may be his own personal hell, it is exactly the gimmick needed to defeat the alien brain. But he need the help of former time-looper Emily Blunt to get him through. I really liked this movie, both in concept and execution. The time loop concept has the potential to get real cheesy or rely on goofy gags, and there is a bit (enough) of that for comic relief. But we don't get stuck there, and the editors use well paced "flash images" to show quick sequences of 10-15 resets in a row. Our brains can (and do) fill in all the repeated details and sameness without having to see it. It is a perfect combination of showing enough, but not too much. My only complaint with this film is with the ending. I expect with time travel movies to be at least a little bit unsettled at the end, not sure how things are or should be. This left me with a completely tidy package... too tidy. A bit of temporal mess would have been more satisfying.
4 stars (out of 5)

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