Edge of Tomorrow

I don't think we will fully appreciate Tom Cruise until he is dead and gone. Sure he's a weirdo who always has that creepy smile on his face which says "Yes! I do inject my body with alien juice so that  I will forever look 30 years old!"; similar to my Colombian friend claiming that black people apply fried chicken grease to their face to accomplish the same. But regardless of how crazy he is, you always end up rooting for him and you become fully immersed in whatever drama he's involved in. He may never win an Oscar but you can never walk away from one his movies claiming that his performance was lacking. He has both the screen presence and charisma that defines what a true movie star is and he has had it for over 30 years. I know that these statements will raise a few eyebrows but just take a look at his IMDB page for a second and be honest with yourself about how you felt when you first saw those movies. It's like when everyone was hating on Michael Jackson for a while, it wasn't until he died that everyone all of a sudden remembered just how fresh Man in the Mirror was. And so the same will happen with Cruise; just like we forgot about the little kids and Mike, we will forget about Xenu and remember just how awesome Risky Business was!

By the way lucky for my Colombian friend, she was a bit tipsy and I love her to death; otherwise she may or may not have died from my throwing watermelon seeds at her ninja style, as we tend do while eating our dessert. But enough racism for one day.

In Edge of Tomorrow, Earth is under attack by an alien force that has the ability to adapt to whatever military strategy we bring at it. So Mack (Cruise) goes on a global recruiting mission to help build up our forces for one final confrontation with them just outside of London. But unbeknownst to him, his new commanding officer plans to put him in charge of the attack, which means that he would be physically on the field of battle. The problem is, Mack has never been trained for battle and tries everything he can within his power to avoid it. This leads to a confrontation between Mack and his commanding officer that eventually winds up with Mack being labeled as a deserter and forced into action as a lowly private. As you would expect, its not long before Mack dies on the battlefield but not before he meets Rita(Emily Blunt), who has become the face of the human resistance. Rita is a badass soldier who has the ability to take out hundreds of aliens with ease, thus earning her the nickname Full Metal Bitch.

But instead of death being the end for him as it is with most human beings, the second Mack dies, he immediately wakes up the day before the actual attack happened in the same exact situation as before. And everything that happened before basically repeats itself over and over again as he continues to die during each battle. No one believes him except for Rita, who during one of the attacks, tells him to look for her when he wakes up again. And it is through their teaming up and the use his knowledge of what is to come, that they work together to get closer to ending the war.

I give the writers credit for doing a fairly decent job in explaining why Mack is able to repeat each day as he does and for explaining why Rita even comes to close to believing him in the first place. And as opposed to just simply stealing ideas from previous alien invasion movies and creating a CGI diluted mess, they actually add something fresh to this genre with the alien's unique abilities. This is easily one of the best sci-fi action movies that has been made in decades! Doug Liman has thankfully ditched the shaky cam that he temporarily fell in love with and decides to film the action pretty straight. The first drop scene from the plane is breathtaking as you see a terrified Cruise thrown out  into the middle of pure chaos with attack ships, soldiers, and aliens buzzing all around him. Once he lands, it feels like you are taken back to the beaches of Normandy just like you saw in Saving Private Ryan. People are getting destroyed in brutal ways and Mack reacts in a manner that we can all identify with; and that is with ultimate fear and a desire to survive by any means necessary.

Although he does so to a certain extent just to give you a sense of the frustration and anger that eventually builds up within Mack, thankfully Liman doesn't frustrate the viewer by repeatedly showing you the same scenes over and over again. With each day, you slowly see Mack using his frustration to become more and more of a badass like Rita and he eventually becomes unrecognizable when compared to the Mack you meet in the opening scenes.

I have to admit that there were quite a few scenes that left me gasping and by the time he finally gets to the head alien, you are ready to jump in the screen and fight right along with him! Plus it was cool to see the kid from Attack the Block get some love in the US. I rate this movie as very FRESH and you suggest that you see it as soon as possible!