Review of Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Seen in 2019.
The rest of the world seeks to contain an alien invasion that has killed nearly everyone in continental Europe.
SF action. There was no call for a hybrid of Groundhog Day (1993) and Starship Troopers (1997), but this is it, and it works a lot better than Source Code (2011). The teasing opening is weak but the closing of the second act is particularly strong. This implementation actually adds both a primitive version of power armour and a psychic power, both present in Heinlein’s original Starship Troopers and absent in Verhoeven’s satire. The action sequences are more similar, though this one has Tom Cruise stuck in a cross between Klendathu and Operation Overlord. The love story and the theme of self-improvement and personal responsibility would not be out of place in Heinlein. I’ve not read Sakurazaka.
Still no jump cuts, but the editing is at least more aggressive than Herring’s, and I like how the script continually slips in repetitions by implication. The escalation and morbidity recall To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971). As in Oblivion (2013), Cruise is distractingly true to his star persona; his role aligns with his gnostic religious beliefs. I would have preferred Bill Paxton in the lead—promoted from a supporting role—without the general’s unlikely strongarming.
References here: Rick and Morty (2013).