This past weekend, I watched Edge of Tomorrow along with several other members of the ICRT Movie Crew (TM). For anybody who read my preview of this movie last month and wondered if the movie lived up to the hype, let me assure that it did in fact do so.

This review will be mostly spoiler-free, but some of it will deal with stuff not made obvious by the trailer. Be warned!

Edge of Tomorrow is a sci-fi action movie starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt. The movie takes place in a world where an alien species dubbed ‘mimics’ starts taking over Europe, and we join the action as humanity is getting ready to make its last push to clear the aliens out.

Tom Cruise’s character, William Cage, starts out as a complete rookie when it comes to combat. But thanks to his first taste of combat, he gains the ability to relive the past day with all his memories and experiences intact. The trick is, he has to die first.

He gets trained and mentored by Emily Blunt’s war hero Rita Vrataski, and together they have to figure out how to harness his unexpected power to defeat the mimics.

First up, the visuals. This movie is great to look at. The armored exo-suits of Edge of Tomorrow, the ‘Jackets’, look real and believable, and the actors have a realistically clunky gait while wearing them. But as Tom’s character gets more used to it, he starts being able to do more and more amazing feats with the suit. The aliens meanwhile tend to move around too much to get a good solid look at them, but the way that they move emphasizes how unearthly they are.

Tom’s Cage starts off as a complete newb, which was a fun departure from some of the badasses he’s played before, like Ethan Hunt and Jack Reacher. He’s also not the most sympathetic character starting off, but his experiences do help him grow and become more empathetic during the course of the movie. In comparison, Emily’s Rita is a consummate veteran who takes no guff from nobody. Later on in the movie, we do get to learn a little bit more about her as she lets her guard down slightly. The two work well together on screen, and make a good team on the battlefield and off.

What I am about to tell you sounds crazy, but the longer I talk, the more rational it’s going to appear…

The movie did greatly remind me of a video game. A very hard one. Each time you die, you need to start over at the very beginning, and try a different tactic to get a bit farther. Not only that, you need to remember each and every step of the way, or else you may not even make it as far as before. Plus, your current tactic may not work at all, and you may need to come up with a new strategy completely from scratch and start all over, whatever it takes to beat the game/alien-invading-force.

Edge of Tomorrow was highly entertaining. It was a solid action movie, and the humor in it largely felt natural instead of something shoe-horned in to get a laugh and break the tension. However, this is not to say that the movie wasn’t without a few faults. The pseudo-science of the film kinda worked throughout, though I’d say it straight up broke at the end. And the ending! A ‘happy ending’ was completely unnecessary. They could have cut the last several minutes out entirely and I feel it would have left a greater impact on the audience compared with the route that they did take. But despite these flaws, all in all, Edge of Tomorrow is definitely worth watching.

Grade: A-