Tom Cruise plays Major Cage, a sales person of sorts for the army. He cuts promotional videos and drives up recruitment numbers in order to avoid going into actual combat. As that would be a boring action film, things don't go well for him and he ends up under the command of Bill Paxton as Master Sergeant Farell. Paxton forces Cage into a battle using a mechanical suit he is not trained on, and he is killed very quickly. The entire plot of the movie is based around the fact that he then wakes up at the beginning of that day. Every time he dies he just resets back to that morning. Like "Groundhog Day." Cage has to figure out how to progress, and the majority of the movie is him figuring out why this is happening and how to fix it.
The other lead is Emily Blunt as Rita Vrataski, the "Full Metal Bitch." That name is a reference to the metal suits they wear to fight, but also one she was given after winning a huge battle as a untrained rookie. She was credited with 100 Alien kills and was called the Angle of Verdun, which is where the battle took place. We find out she also had the time loop power, which is why she was able to go from no experience to a killing machine. She simply relived the day over and over again until she memorized every detail of it. Used that to kill everything, and survive it herself. She serves as a mentor to Cage as she trains him each new day, and helps him understand the limits and meaning of his new power. She also has a way to win the war, and provides a way to move the plot forward to a resolution.
There are plenty of other characters in the film, but they are all minor parts. Cage was part of a squad who they could have focused more on, but in the end you never really felt attached to them. As they had their big moment at the end of the film, it seemed lessened by that fact. You had no real interest in them, as they were never fleshed out. The actual character development was one of my main issues with the film. We see Cage change from a coward that you genuinely disliked, into a true hero as the movie went on. We saw him care for other people and put them before him. He was the only one to really get this treatment. Blunt's character Rita never really got explored sadly. There was a great line in there where Cage is trying to get her to trust him, and is rattling off info she told him in past loops to show her that at one point she had trusted him. He gives her a name, her middle name, and she says it is not correct. Later on when she is dying for the dozenth time, she tells him her real middle name. This would have been a perfect chance for them to expand on the character. In the book her parents were killed by the mimics and she faked her identity to enlist as a minor to fight for them. The middle name she gave Cage was probably the fake one she used, before telling him her real one later on. Small details like this could have been easily fitted into many of the dialogue scenes and really helped better establish the roles. In the end though Rita just feels closed off.
The actors all did well with their respective roles however. Cruise had a nice range as he almost felt like a different character by the end of the movie. And while Blunt didn't get the development I would have liked, she did very well with her role. Rita was a bad ass, and exuded coolness. The other minor roles were done well, and Paxton is always fun to watch.
The battle scenes are one of the main draws for the movie. If you see any of the trailers, they take the main stage. The CGI was good enough for me, though I have heard complaints about it from others. I never saw any real glaring issues with it myself though, and I enjoyed all the cool visuals and battle sequences. The Mimics looked very interesting, and would be terrifying to face in real life. The way they had the tendrils moving and spiraling around really made a cool effect. And I loved how they moved and just seemed to thrash and roll about. The metal suits were awesome looking, and seeing the two fight was exhilarating. The movement for the suits could look fake at times, but it was rare and not overly noticeable. The only real draw back was the big bad Alien design. He just looked boring, but it made sense given the context.
So good acting, fun battles, and a interesting story and concept....why did the movie get mediocre reviews upon its initial release? Well other then the mentioned Character Development, the main issue most people seemed to have with it was the ending. It didn't really make sense, and required you to make up your own reasons for why it happened that way. For what it is worth, the movie does have a different ending from the book. I won't spoil anything here, but the complaints against the ending are valid. It does not work within the given information we have, and as such you feel cheated once the movie is over. Still though, even with that....it was still enjoyable overall. I think "Looper" is still the best modern Time Travel movie right now, but "Edge of Tomorrow" has plenty to offer if you can get past the poor ending.
If you are interested in how the book ended, I will tell you. Rita and Keiji(Cage) kill the big bad alien....and the loop resets. They decide they missed one of the antenna attached to it, and that is what allowed it to reset the day. This time they take them all out, but then Rita attacks Keiji. Basically their brains have been altered by the alien substance that gave them their looping powers. They now serve as weaker versions of the antenna, and while both alive they are able to function enough for the alien to force a reset. They fight to the death so that one can live, and Keiji ends up killing her. He ends up telling her he loves her, as she has spent something like 160 days with her at that point. She is unable to say it back as she just met him, but she does understand the feeling as she has experience her own loop before. He then becomes the new hero of the war and gets the name Killer Keiji. He tries to live out his life for her. If they could have incorporated some of that into the film ending it would have been much better. If nothing else it explains why Cage is now able to telepathically connect to the Alien, which is a huge plot point mid way into the film.
This was a fun movie, and I enjoyed it. However a weak finish did lesson it quite a bit. There are a few other cases of 4 or even 5 star movies dropping greatly in the last few minutes. Stephen King's "The Mist" being the best example. However that does not completely take away the rest of the film.
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