I was recently given the chance to watch Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt’s latest science fiction film Edge Of Tomorrow through the kindness of Roadshow Films. Edge Of Tomorrow is going to be released in cinema’s on June 5, 2014 in Australia and will be out on June 6th 2014 in the United States. I’ll go through what I saw in the preview and will mark the plot paragraph with a spoiler warning for those not wanting to know too much about the film as well.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw61gCe2oqI[/youtube]
Edge Of Tomorrow is directed by Doug Liman who some would know as the director of The Bourne Identity (2002) and Mr. and Mrs Smith (2005). One of those films I like and the other one I can’t stand, so I was a bit cautious going into the preview on how the film would be. It also has cinematographer Dion Bebe who has worked on recent films like Gangster Squad and Memoirs of a Geisha. These two people coming together have given Edge Of Tomorrow a sort of distinct look. A lot of the long shots in battle scenes that are filled with activity look really great on screen.
In viewing the first 20 minutes I felt that they had portrayed the tone just right in this film. While last years Tom Cruise movie Oblivion was more of a serious science fiction movie, Edge Of Tomorrow has more of a lighthearted tone to it. There are casual jokes and subtle ones as well that are thrown around the place to lighten up the movie. Some of the one liners were pretty funny which helped a lot to keep the film fun and entertaining.
Plot Spoilers In the Paragraphs Below
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Edge Of Tomorrow sort of follows a Groundhog day (1993) type of plot. Basically Tom Cruise’s character wakes up each day and it’s the same day. Tom Cruise plays Bill Cage who used to work as a PR and marketing person for the army but is now enlisted as a full time soldier. Bill (Tom Cruise) goes into battle for the first time and gets killed easily, but he wakes up in the morning and relives the same day again and again. Basically he gains skills each day and learns more and more about how to fight and win each day, progressing more as he gets better and stays alive longer.
There are some funny parts with Bill (Tom Cruise) trying to operate his weapons at the start where we watch him fail at first. The battle Bill goes into is a large scale one where he fights these robotic type of units. It was not made clear what exactly he was fighting or for what though, guess I’ll have to watch the full movie.
Emily Blunt’s character also made an appearance in the film as Rita Vrataski who is sort of a legendary fighter. It’s Rita who trains Bill to become a good fighter and gives him the skills he needs to have. She also has lived the same day over and over so understands what Bill is going through. Plot wise, even though it sounds crazy in writing, it’s actually not that bad to watch. I’m very interested to see how this turns out for a full run time viewing. I was very immersed in the plot for this movie when I was watching it, it’s going to be a good one.
Plot Spoilers End Here
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In terms of the acting that I saw, I thought that it was very good. Tom Cruise is a very experience actor and in this he’s similar to what he was in Oblivion but different enough that I’m happy to watch him again. Emily Blunt seemed to train a lot physically for her soldier role and you could tell that there was a lot put into the film by her to make her performance a good one. Both lead actors were great and I thought they had good chemistry together as well.
The movie is very bright with many colours on screen, you can see a lot of what is going on. The battles, well the ones I saw are fought during daylight hours so you can everything. It’s much different to Godzilla where everything was completely either brown, grey or black. It’s a bright futuristic world that we are presented with in Edge Of Tomorrow. The military fights in mechanized suits and they have massive drop ships to drop in units. Almost like something you would see in a video game, actually the movie is almost as if they crossed Groundhog day with Titanfall.
But in seriousness though the movie is actually based on a book from Hiroshi Sakurazaka of Japan called All You Need Is Kill. I thought though that even though I had only seen the movie for 20 minutes and because it was based on a book that there was definitely going to be much larger plot developments. I did notice that the character of Bill and Rita seemed to be developing as the movie went on and actually both characters are very likable.
Overall Edge Of Tomorrow was a movie that I was sort of unsure about from watching the trailers but grew to like watching during my preview. The characters are very likable and the actors are well known, but they are both very good. The world presented is bright and colourful and some of the lines are funny enough that many should enjoy watching this movie. While I was unsure about if it will be good, I’m definitely excited to see this movie when it releases on June 6th. It seemed like a good entertainment film that maybe will have some message in it that might just get you thinking a bit about life or something, it could just leave everyone confused as well, we’ll just have to wait and see.
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If you’re interested you can also read my thoughts on Godzilla after seeing 20 minutes of that as well.
