Between the months of May—or, if we follow the ever-increasing trend of
cinematic
climate change, much earlier than that—and August, I go through an
intensive exercise of willful suspension of expectations whenever I set foot in
a theater. Summer Movie Season, or better yet SUMMER MOVIE SEASON in all caps,
is easily dismissed as a period of shameless studio profiteering in which the
industry churns out dime-a-dozen spectacle films that cost a hell of a lot more
than a dime. They’re too big, too loud, too expensive, too reverent to the
altar of the lowest common denominator, too dependent on slick special effects
and not enough so on narrative and character. I bemoan how otherwise gifted
stars spend their estivate months squandering their talents in Hollywood products
addicted to and addled by computer-generated monsters, robots, and explosions.
Then, every once in a while, something like Edge of Tomorrow comes along, and my faith in the mainstream, commercial
American movie industry is renewed. I saw the film the Friday it came out. On
Sunday, I had a 13-hour trans-Atlantic flight to get through. My first priority
was not making sure I had a window seat, low-sodium meals on the plane, enough
time to switch terminals between connecting flights, or, you know, that my
passport was, indeed, in my bag. Between Friday and Sunday I was badgering
everyone I know in Europe not only to go see this movie, but to wait until I
got home on Monday and come see it with me.
Hands-down director Doug Liman’s best
and most purely pleasurable effort in the twelve years since The Bourne Identity (if not longer than
that), Edge of Tomorrow is less of a
time-travel movie than an experience movie. One
review called it “a cheeky little puzzle picture in expensive-looking
blockbuster drag.” It’s a stylish, cleverly crafted, and continually involving mind-
and clock-bending bit of action adventure that neither transcends nor redeems
the genre, but, thanks to a superb creative team and star
Tom Cruise, becomes a surprisingly satisfying exercise of that genre.
Based on Hiroshi Sikurazaka’s 2004 illustrated novel “All
You Need Is Kill,” the movie is brilliantly adapted
for the screen by writers Christopher
McQuarrie, who knows his way around a mindfuck (The Usual Suspects), and Jez and John-Henry Butterworth.
Edge of Tomorrow is a true science
fiction film, highly conceptual and narratively ambitious, set during the
aftermath of an alien invasion. It begins and ends as a gripping summer
blockbuster, with setpieces featuring the best special effects money can buy. But
the long, ingenious, and richly realized middle act sets it apart from and
above so much of the season’s outpour of generic studio products.
Synopsis is not our friend when summing up this movie. Edge of Tomorrow opens on a montage of
stock disaster footage—at which point I started having After Earth-induced PTSD flashbacks
that were, thankfully, unwarranted. The world is wrecked by war, its most
photogenic cities reduced to ash, its populace killed off by the millions. The alien
“Mimic scourge” has conquered most of Europe and quickly decimated human
defenses, owing to its seemingly preternatural ability to anticipate all
military forces’ next moves. If anyone was wondering, the Mimics are truly
terrifying, metallic spidery nightmare creatures that look like a cross between
dragons, octopi, and live wires, razor-tentacled squids that roll across the
landscape like tumbleweeds on crack and pierce like javelins.
The only semblance of hope and a propagandist’s wet dream, the last (and
only) victory against the Mimics was won by world-famous soldier and one-woman
fighting force Rita Vrataski (Emily
Blunt), known as “The Angel of Verdun” for her heroics at that eponymous
alien battle—and, less flatteringly, as “Full Metal Bitch” for her brusque
personality.
Cruise, who’s been spending his fifties saving humanity, plays the aptly
named Major William Cage. The glorified Army PR rep had me at hello, but this
is a surprising choice for a hero. Cage is a figurehead, not a fighter, a wily
spin doctor but an acknowledged wimp. “I do this,”
he quips to his commanding officer, “to avoid doing that.” The character has
never seen a day of combat in his life and tries every trick to wriggle out of
being sent to the front by Gen. Brigham (Brendan Gleeson at his most hard-ass),
who’s asked him to join a platoon readying to invade France. Cage tries to talk
his way out of it. When talk fails, he tries extortion. Given the final order
in the general’s office, he raises his brow and breaks out in a small,
disbelieving smile before beginning a soft-shoe shuffle towards the door. The
song-and-dance makes you remember how light Cruise used to be,
gliding through roles on his affable megawatt grin as genuinely genial guys you
wanted to get to know. He’s become an action star—the action star—and we started to
see his smile less and less, until, watching him lay it on Gleeson’s character
in the opening of Edge of Tomorrow, I
wondered, Where the hell has he been?
Despite the disarming grin, his character gets deposited none too
gently at Forward Operating Base Heathrow in London among trained soldiers
heavily armed and armored with giant exoskeletons. He’s never been in one of
these things before. Cage is stripped of his identity, turned into just another
grunt likely to be chewed up by the Mimics, then literally thrown into the
fray. He learns how to use his weapons in the field and even meets the military
goddess Rita, just before she dies.
And then he dies.
Then he wakes up at Forward Operating Base Heathrow in London among
trained soldiers heavily armed and armored with giant exoskeletons. When asked
if he’s ever been in one of these things before, he says, “Maybe.” Cage is
stripped of his identity, turned into just another grunt likely to be chewed up
by the Mimics, then literally thrown into the fray.
Like “Slaughterhouse
Five” hero Billy Pilgrim, Cage has come unstuck in time, locked in a cycle
of eternal recurrence; he’s on seemingly endless repeat as the movie coils and folds
back on itself. The character wages the same battle until he can do it with his
eyes closed and his hands tied behind his back—in one instance, literally.
Practice has made him perfect, at least up until a point, allowing Liman
to rework the bedlam of the opening battle until it resembles a beautiful,
deadly dance.
Cage makes for a demanding, complex role that changes constantly as the
story is told and retold and retold. The character starts out as a Jerry-Maguire-type
shallow, smooth-talking, cocksure manipulator who will say or do anything to
preserve his comfort. He undergoes a myriad of tiny transformations, deftly
navigated by the actor with a refreshing lack of vanity, until Cage exhibits
exceptional competence, dignity, and honor, and finally the steely-eyed,
day-saving grace under
pressure the Mission: Impossible series taught us
to expect. But that eventual awesomeness feels genuinely earned, rather than a
foregone conclusion. In short, the star does a 180 and makes it completely
believable—because who’s to say dying a few dozen times wouldn’t prove a
transformative experience for anyone—and the film becomes a striking (if
simplistic and sometimes downright silly) study in fate, human nature, and the
ability to grow and change.
I’ve always found Cruise likeable, sometimes even perfect in the right
roles, and age has only deepened him by bringing out a well-hidden
vulnerability. Someone should give him some sort of acting award just for the
sheer number of yelps, gasps, and barely cut-off curses he summons every time
he’s killed by a Mimic or shot in the head by Blunt’s character, who trains him
in a way that will make that scary guy that yells at you at the gym to keep
going seem like the sweetest human-sized teddy bear.
Sure, the fatalities are fun because we know the day will just reset,
but it’s that moment of sheer, unadorned agony Cage goes through every time he
wakes up that my mind came back to after seeing the film a second time.
Startled and gasping for breath, he shakes of his fear and prepares for a
suicide mission every day of his life until he wins the war or goes utterly
mad. The poignancy of his plight is never far from the surface, however
frenetic the action. This is the rare action film whose quiet moments cut as
deep as its fight scenes, and even rarer, a summer shoot-’em-up that
understands the fragility of life.
Although this is Cruise’s movie through-and-through, the other
characters are given moments of humor, terror, or humanity. With a barely
discernible wink, Bill
Paxton plays Farell, a drawling drill sergeant with an amusingly sour sense
of humor. When Cage notes from his Southern accent that he’s obviously
American, Farell flawlessly barks back, “No, sir, I’m from Kentucky!” Blunt
invests Rita with grit and grace, not to mention she’s not too hard on the
eyes, as the oft repeated, fiercely beautiful downward-dogging cobra-like yoga
pose she’s introduced in will attest. The two leads get a morbidly funny, neo-screwball vibe
going as they bicker and banter amidst battling aliens or sidestep soldiers and
bullets in perfect synchronicity like a full metal version of Fred
and Ginger.
The elaborately choreographed tracking shots, long takes, and
unglamorous European hellscape bring to mind Alfonso Cuaron’s
Children of Men, but Edge
of Tomorrow can be best described as a cross between Groundhog Day, Saving Private Ryan, and Wile E.
Coyote’s worst morning ever. These references should give you an idea of
the way the movie mixes gravitas and
insouciance, at times popping with welcome, unexpected levity and wit, clever
one-liners, and the barrage of physical punishments and slapstick indignities
Cage undergoes.
As engagingly light as Edge of
Tomorrow is on its feet, it balances that comic touch with impressively
staged, gritty, and gruesome battle sequences. The final act is almost swamped
by generic (if exceptionally well-done) pyrotechnics and noise, which is
predictable, given the high studio stakes and the industry’s faith in
spectacles of destruction. But the effects are at their most exciting and
convincing early in the film, in the vivid, visceral reimagining of chaotic
WWII combat as a high-tech aerial assault on Normandy. In IMAX 3-D, you might get
vertigo and it’s gonna hurt when you hit that shore and get assaulted by
flaming shards of plane raining and creatures that dart, dodge, scuttle, snap,
swirl, lash, and lunge like a huge, hissing, summersaulting octopus from hell.
Make no mistake, this is a brutal, bone-crushing film that bravely pushes its PG-13
rating
almost beyond its breaking point.
Aided by the crackerjack cutting prowess of editor James Herbert,
Liman skillfully conveys the endless repetition without making the film itself
repetitive. One of Edge of Tomorrow’s
most fascinating qualities is its intelligent, intuitive judgment of the
audience’s learning curve, reflected in flawless pacing. The movie slyly
teaches you how to watch it and then seems to track your progress before moving
on. At first it repeats whole scenes and bits of dialogue until you get used to
the idea, then expertly leaves things out because it knows they’re not
necessary, in a playful sort of narrative shorthand—if not sleigh-of-hand. By
the end, it’s tactically withholding information and letting us fill in the
gaps and figure it out for ourselves, repeating key images and lines only
because the familiar material has now changed its meaning. It’s as if on a
certain plane the film exists, like its main character, outside of linear time,
creating itself as you watch it.
Edge of Tomorrow will keep
you on edge.
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