Movie review: Edge of Tomorrow

Well, that’s just patently ridiculous, surely?

No, as it turns out. It’s a big-budget, mildly tongue-in-cheek joyride across a damaged, broken Europe, occupied – in the war-time sense – by a race of terrifying creatures that look like the offspring of a bad-tempered octopus and a wobbly circular saw. In a good way.

Cruise is US Army Major William Cage, essentially a public relations expert in a suit rather than a soldier. When he’s sent to the front by the understandably grumpy commander-in-chief of the war effort (Gleeson), who wants him to “sell the invasion”, things go more or less as expected, which is not a good thing for Cage. And then that happens all over again. And again.

The usual formula is video game as film, where big-screen characters morph into avatars that can be controlled using joysticks and touch-pads.

Here, though, it’s as though a film has been constructed using the techniques employed when writing a game: character ventures into a setting; chooses option A; loses life; restart; character returns to setting; avoids option A but fails in reaching target B and so on.

Handled badly, this would quickly become annoying. But director Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity, Mr & Mrs Smith) is at home with high action, big stars and enormous budgets, and he deftly combines the various plot streams to ensure that what is going on is easily understandable.

A potentially unexpected facet of the film – if the studio didn’t actually plan the film’s release date according to a particular historic date, they will certainly claim to have done so – is that it hits screens a week after the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings.

Edge Of Tomorrow’s central plot event is an invasion of Europe to rid the continent of a malignant force, and watching Cruise and company hit the beaches of northern France under lethally heavy fire with images of survivors of the real-life event in mind adds some depth to proceedings.

Performances are uniformly enjoyable. Cruise continues to refine his trick of being a likeable onscreen presence while also being a ruthless businessman and mild whack-job off

set; Emily Blunt handles the action sequences like an Amazon you want to be friends with and Bill Paxton takes infectious delight in his one-dimensional Master Sergeant character – all cliches, bluster and unimpressive moustache.

Edge Of Tomorrow is a high-concept muddle of science fiction, action and New Age connectedness, stirred together with great panache.