A Playful and Furious Sci-Fi Action Film in the Best Traditions of the Genre
The U.S. Air Force’s press attaché, Lieutenant William Cage, finds himself involuntarily thrust into the role of a private on the battlefield of a massive war against an alien army that has already consumed most of Europe and Russia. On the shores of Normandy, Cage is killed by one of the so-called Mimics, but the man wakes up again the day before his death. And so it goes, over and over.
At first glance, “Edge of Tomorrow” doesn’t seem particularly original. Countless borrowings are evident: the time loop shenanigans of “Groundhog Day,” the inventive carnage on a cold French beach reminiscent of “Saving Private Ryan.” “Alien,” “Starship Troopers,” “The Matrix” – the list goes on, especially when you automatically add the recent “Oblivion,” where the same Tom Cruise once again saved an Earth ravaged by aliens. But the filmmakers don’t try to hide these influences; instead, they honestly extend a hand and seamlessly join the ranks of the genre’s elite, confident that they won’t tarnish the uniform.
While the world continues to wait for more or less decent video game adaptations, “Edge of Tomorrow” comes closest to this elusive goal. And although the film didn’t have its origins in the world of consoles, its internal logic fully corresponds to gaming culture – mainly thanks to Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s source novel, who, as we know, was a programmer by training.
The Video Game Logic
If we translate the plot onto a game board, it turns out that when the hero wakes up on the first day of his combat service (and also the penultimate day of his life), he simply starts from the last save point. The huge alpha-alien on the beach in Normandy, in this case, represents a level boss, and when it reduces Tom Cruise’s health bar to zero, we are again transported to the last save and forced to live these two days again. With each attempt, the hero learns to survive more effectively in order to go further and eventually reach the main boss.
The ability to predict surrounding events also comes from video games: here it is better to dodge the explosion to the left, and from there another Mimic will jump out. Plus, we don’t forget about leveling up the character and unlocking additional content. Thus, having perfectly mastered the somersault between the wheels of a speeding truck, you can get access to a trainer in the form of Emily Blunt, who will not only tell you how to level up, but also help you spend experience points in a special automated gym.
More Than Just a Game
In retelling, all this may seem something painfully mechanical, like the exo-skeletons abundantly presented here, but the team of screenwriters Christopher McQuarrie and Jez and John-Henry Butterworth took care of a multifaceted, lively and rather intelligent script with a whole set of striking and often very funny and lifelike phrases. What is only the comment of one of the landing participants about Cruise’s appearance: “Something is wrong with your combat suit… Oh yeah, there’s a dead man inside.”
For Tom Cruise, this is undoubtedly the best and most multifaceted work in years. In the first act, we meet a desk rat, a coward, almost a blackmailer. Cage is so ridiculous that he can’t even take his hand weapons off the safety, and when he first finds himself in the thick of things, he aimlessly wanders around the battlefield while his comrades die in droves in the mud. But battle after battle (or rather, attempt after attempt) and the rat turns into a real lion. Emily Blunt also made an excellent heroine of propaganda posters. She here represents not so much a romantic interest as a mentor figure, a kind of antipode to the main character. Doug Liman has always been an experimenter in terms of actor chemistry, and although the explosion that happened to him with Brad and Angelina on “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” is unlikely to ever happen again, the screen couple still turned out great. It seems that after the rather mediocre “Jumper” and “Fair Game,” Liman finally gained his former directorial form. By all accounts, this is his biggest film, and if aliens don’t attack Earth tomorrow, it will surely remain in memory as one of the main film events of the summer of 2014.