Review of Edge of Tomorrow (2014) by Nick D — 04 Feb 2015

"Edge of Tomorrow" - Action, laughs, romance, excellent entertainment.

Rita Vrataski: Come find me when you wake up!

We've seen it all at this point: giant space battles, massive robots fighting in the ocean, Superman being repeatedly thrown into buildings; Visual effects have clearly come a long way, but like I already said, we've seen it all. It's hard to rely simply on visuals, it's happened quite a bit and while still possible, it's not anything we haven't already seen.

Edge of Tomorrow is yet another high budget action film that includes aliens attacking Earth. Sighing and groaning, I paid little to no attention to the trailers. Well, turns out we have a pretty smart movie here. Edge of Tomorrow is a unique concept, although it borrows from Groundhog's Day. Yes, a film about aliens borrows from Groundhog's Day.

So here we are, aliens are attacking Earth, we need to stop them, blah blah blah.. We've seen this before. However, we have not seen an action movie so smart and aware, especially one that incorporates comedy and romance. It's really a big movie. Not in the length of its runtime or because of giant aliens battles, but pure film. It has a pretty okay alien story, but seeing the events unfold makes us care less about the action (which is still very good) and more about our human story.

Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt are wonderful together. I mean that in a sincere way. This movie is partially romantic. However it's not even the main focus, which ultimately is to stop the aliens, but that's not what the audience is motivated by. We only want these characters to succeed because we care for them. How rare? How cool for an action/sci-fi/visual movie to contain the audience's attention for more than eye candy and CGI effects.

I love "Edge of Tomorrow". It's fun, proud and very unique. Its human story exceeds the interests that have been previously established with science fiction films involving action and aliens. Don't get me wrong though, I love a good action movie, Pacific Rim was a very cool movie, but I just have to say that Edge of Tomorrow is simply just better.