TOM CRUISE & EMILY BLUNT IN EDGE OF TOMORROW

year: 2014 rating: **

Anyone yearning for a combination of GROUNDHOG DAY and STARSHIP TROOPERS, your prayers have been answered…

This purposely redundant reliving the same day till it’s done right thriller stars Tom Cruise as Major Cage, whose transformation from cowardly media correspondent to courageous battler of speedy, multi-tentacle aliens is as good as EDGE OF TOMORROW gets... While it's fun seeing the usually intrepid Cruise playing the fool, what a relief that he eventually becomes the hero, a role far more believable and less contrived. 

His beautiful co-star is a co-lead rather than love interest… although Cruise’s Cage almost becomes smitten with Rita, a resilient warrior played by Emily Blunt. They do, after all, have something extraordinarily unique in common: she used to wield the same time loop “gift” Cage is now stuck with. But any deep connection is merely hinted at, occurring sporadically throughout the shaky action and never amounting to a worthwhile friendship, partnership or romance… EDGE has no time for that, which is unfortunate since her unpredictable fate should mean more to Cage and the  audience. After providing loads of specific expository, Rita's job is to shoot Cage in the head every time there’s a setback in the mission… Thus he keeps repeating the same battle that the aliens, called Mimics, have already foreseen in order to win that particular ground-strike. Eventually the duo must figure a way to swipe the lead creature's memory so the aliens can no longer acquire this particularly unfair advantage.

Attempting to balance science-fiction and espionage, the most intriguing moments occur whenever Cage and Rita venture slightly past the point we keep experiencing. Otherwise it’s passable fight-or-be-killed filler, which might be difficult to watch more than once since, by the end, you’ve seen it over a dozen times already.