Review of Edge of Tomorrow (2014) by Dmitri M — 17 Mar 2015

Top Movies if 2014 - #9.

Imagine Groundhog Day but this time it's a sci-fi movie about an Alien Invasion and you get Edge of Tomorrow. Edge of Tomorrow does everything you expect from a sci-fi film right. The protagonists were likeable and entertaining, they had great chemistry and evolved significantly over the course of the movie and Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt did fantastic jobs playing these 2 protagonists. The plot allowed for a lot of action as the alien felt like an actual threat, but also a lot of great character moments, as well as humour. The premise of repeating the same day over and over, using the alien's abilities against them was ingenious and really made for an amazing movie experience. Not to mention the special effects which were top notch and really gave the aliens a touch of personality. So why is it not higher on the list? Like Gone Girl above it, Edge of Tomorrow suffers from a very weak ending. The difference is while Gone Girl didn't have the happy ending that we wanted, Edge of Tomorrow gave us a happy ending that we didn't want. Too often I see Sci-Fi films with some form of time travel element, break its own rules or find some convoluted way just to give a happy ending to the characters. I call this the Source Code effect, and I saw it happen 3 times this year in Edge of Tomorrow, Interstellar and X-Men Days of Future Past. In Edge of Tomorrow, which was the best of the 3, the ending didn't have the guts to kill off their main characters and brought them back in a very confusing and irritating ending that leaves you with a headache. As such I had no choice but to put this at #9 on my list.

Original Review.

Edge of Tomorrow - 4/5 Stars.

There's a lot to love about this movie. There's a lot of good action, some great special effects, good acting by the leads and actual chemistry between the leads. The characters are likeable and rather funny. The plot for the most part is very entertaining and well thought out.

I say "for the most part" because this is where my only real complaint for this movie comes from, which is the ending. Following in the footsteps from other time travel movies such as Source Code and Days of Future Past, the movie insists on having a complicated ending that's difficult to grasp all for the sake of having a happy ending. That being said, at least the time travel mechanics made total sense, unlike other movies (I'm looking at you Looper!).

With all this said, I'll give Edge of Tomorrow a 4 out of 5 Stars, because aside from the ending, everything that preceded it was highly entertaining.