Edge of Tomorrow

There's a poster with Tom Cruise on as well.

Last week, I went to see the new Tom Cruise actioner, Edge of Tomorrow. Cruise is someone I can take or leave - as an actor; I have no time for Scientology - depending on his role and performance, and director Doug Liman's record balances The Bourne Identity with Jumper. I've liked Emily Blunt in most things I've seen her in, but this is no Sunshine Cleaning, so overall I went into this not sure how it would pan out.

This is a film in which Cruise plays a smug jerk, who becomes a hero in order to survive, in the course of which he is killed at least 24 times, often by Blunt, and gets called 'maggot' by Tony Todd an average of once every five minutes. It is also a mid-concept SF action film with a reasonable grasp of its philosophical limitations (unlike, say, Looper, it knows full-well that it's cleverness is essentially a trick) and Emily Blunt in power armour.

Breaking it down, and without spoilers, Cruise works well in the role of a smug snake who spins military press releases to avoid combat until he finds himself shoved onto the front line. He's actually a decent character actor if he can stop grinning for five minutes, and he's pretty effective here. Blunt, heretofore primarily a dramatic and light comedy actress, is a powerful physical presence as Sergeant Rita Vrataski (unlike Cruise's William Cage, her name isn't changed from the Japanese original, although she is British rather than American) and about as sexualised as a half-brick in a sock.

And then there's the supporting cast, including Tony Todd, whose only role is to call Cage a maggot, Bill Paxton as Cage's terrifyingly chipper platoon sergeant, a bunch of minor character actors as the expendable squad, and Brendan Gleeson as a ruthless general. They're all good, and if the dialogue isn't exactly deathless, it isn't full of howlers either. There are plenty of little character moments which give the film some dramatic weight to go with the action, although for myself I would have liked to see a little more of the squad rather than just the central dyad.

As to the action, it's pretty faultless. The combination of costume and wirework lends real weight to the characters' exosuits. The invasion, a brutal landing on the beaches of France, invokes Saving Private Ryan's frenetic, terrifying opening while making no attempt to pretend to equal weight.

The ending of the film is, for me, a little bit of a let down and feels slightly tacked on, although I've managed to square it in my own head.

Coming out of the film, we ran down whether it would be a suitable entry for the Bad Movie Mecca and decided it wasn't, combining high production values with a good cast, acceptable dialogue, a tight plot and good use of what it had to work with. Well worth a look.