'Edge of Tomorrow': Bad title for fun movie
Stars Tom Cruise in a sci-fi version of "Groundhog Day," as a soldier fated to live the same day of combat over and over.
THINK of "Edge of Tomorrow" as an overdue Harold Ramis tribute movie.
Comparisons to Ramis' "Groundhog Day" have already been widely noted - a soldier (Tom Cruise) battling aliens is fated to live the same combat day repeatedly, until he figures out how to outflank his Earth-invading foe.
Less widely noted are similarities to "Stripes," the fish-out-of-water service comedy that had Bill Murray misplaced in the U.S. Army, using his slacker charm to transform a company of misfits into a cohesive unit.
There's a lot of that in the character of Cage (Cruise), a smarmy huckster from the Army's public-relations office assigned by a NATO-ish general (Brendan Gleeson) to photograph frontline exploits on humans vs. aliens D-Day (the aliens have taken over most of Europe, the allies are landing in France).
Cage balks, and is sent into battle against his will, plopped down among much tougher men (and women) - an outcast at first, he learns to lead.
In this role, Cruise gets a chance to do some against-type comedy, playing a white-collar B.S. artist suddenly dropped into the middle of a shooting war.
The surprise is that Cruise is pretty funny, and pretty good - or maybe it's not a surprise, when you consider that in Cruise's best work ("Jerry Maguire," "Magnolia") he plays a superficial guy forced to own up to his own shallowness.
He's pushed in that direction by the war's billboard hero (Emily Blunt), legendary alien-ass-kicker, who shows Cage the battlefield ropes and is at his side as the movie earns its action-movie bona fides (abetted by the warped-time angle, which the movie handles coherently and with humor).
"Edge of Tommorow" gets more plot heavy and straight-faced as it goes along, and culminates in France amid the usual mega-dose of ho-hum special affects. The sell-out ending is about as compromised as star-driven blockbusters can get.
But it's an amusing, story-driven ride for most of its modest length, as pieced together by "Bourne Identity" and "Go" director Doug Liman, who's always been a good pacer of movies.