13 - Edge of Tomorrow

Edge of Tomorrow is one of the best films in 2014. It's not just edge of your seat nail biting entertainment. You'll also think about it when it's over, which is saying a lot in the flash paper world of big movie entertainment where stories are made to go in one eye out the other. Not gimmicky or derivative, it's actually about something we've lost touch with in American culture; perseverance in the face of despair. It's something the audience certainly knows about. The economy is fostering it upon 99% of us everyday. 

This movie is cut from that same cloth. Trapped in a repeating day a shallow self serving hero William Cage (tom Cruise) is faced with a brutal comeuppance for his selfish ways. I am not a Tom Cruise fan but somehow I think he's upped his game in his many outings as he matures as a performer. He brings many layers to this one, not the least of which is his lighthearted ability to bring a comedic spin, seemingly impossibly, to his multiple assassinations by his mentor and love interest, 

Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt) during his training sequence. Bill Paxton as a fierce platoon commander and Brendan Gleeson as General of United Earth Forces, not to mention the rag tag squad Cruise is hung out to dry with round out the excellent cast. 

The cleverness of the movie is partly that we have to experience a new alien invasion threat, A tall order that director Dong Liman and the art department succeed at alarmingly well. The second problem, any writer can tell you, is having to personalize the movie in Cage's crushing Kafkaesque entrapment. He dies on an Omaha-like beach so many times you begin to become convinced it's actually happening. And once he gets past that soul crashing labyrinthine gauntlet things get really hard. The man who only had himself to live for, starts to live for someone else and that begins to change who he is. Adapted from a book there are three credited screenwriters including Christopher Mcquarrie, hats off to them all.  

This film touches on that deep theme and brings it home as in the end.. hope is all they have left, Perseverance wins. It's good message for the rest of us leave the theater and go back to fighting the good fight everyday. 

source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-morton/review-edge-of-tomorrow_b_5573228.html