Not enough people have seen this movie, so I’m posting a review.

What’s It About? Disgraced Maj. William Cage gains the ability to reset the day each time he dies, and must use this power to repel an alien invasion.

STRAIGHT UP: It’s great. Intense and fast-paced. 8.5/10

What I Liked

Tom Cruise as William Cage – A successful example of the tricky “unlikeable protagonist” trope. Watching Cage evolve from a self-interested propagandist to a real action hero is very satisfying, and Cruise gives his all in every scene.

Video-game pacing – The film thrives on having our heroes get just a little closer to defeating the alien threat each time, only for an even bigger challenge to appear. Towards the end, I found myself whispering “one more time” under my breath like I was playing an arcade game and just needed a couple more quarters to win. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s engaging.

Repetitive, but not redundant – A time-loop story can fall victim to recycling its own scenes too much, but this one avoids that fate by having the characters adopt completely new strategies (that lead to completely new places) right before the old ones start feeling stale.

Pitch-black humor – This movie is much funnier than I expected, and a lot of the humor involves our heroes blundering into some truly absurd ways to die.

A real sense of tension – It’s established early and often that just about anything can and will kill Cage, so the final scene – where Cage is under pressure to do everything right the first time – is unbelievably intense.

What I Disliked

The color palette – Placed alongside the gorgeous, vivid visuals of some other summer blockbusters, Edge of Tomorrow fails to impress with its brown-and-grey industrial sci-fi look. Was the source manga so uninspiring?

The ending – If the film had ended about 5 minutes earlier, it would have been beautiful and poetic. The epilogue sequence felt tacked-on and inappropriate.

CLOSING THOUGHT: A lot of serious film critics have, in dismissive tones, called this film a “video game in disguise.” So what? Video games are exciting, and they can sometimes tell great stories – why should other media be penalized for drawing inspiration from them? Besides, what we have here is an undeniably great story, one that makes the most of its premise and is handled with more care and craft than the standard Hollywood fare. This is the first movie I’ve enjoyed without reservations this summer, and it should have been #1 at the box office last weekend.

Also, they should have kept the original title, All You Need Is Kill, because it’s incredible.