The trailer for Edge of Tomorrow popped up during one of our irregular cinema outings. I mentally dismissed it as a generic sci-fi Hollywood movie starring generic sci-fi action star Tom Cruise and thought nothing more of it. But months after its release, I started hearing about how this is way better than it has any reason to be, even from cinephile friends whose tastes I trust. Since this is sci-fi after all and I am a fan of time loops as a plot device, as in Groundhog Day and to a lesser extent Source Code and even Next, this meant I just had to put it onto my watch queue.

Of course, my experience of time loops in fiction extends far beyond these two films since this is a common trope in fanfiction. My favourite of these is probably the Naruto fic Time Braid in which the eponymous ninja and his friends repeatedly loop and use all that time to become the most powerful ninja in existence. Edge of Tomorrow offers the same kind of thrill by showing Cruise’s William Cage become increasingly badass as he accumulates combat experience while within the loops. Cage’s acrobatic circle-strafing as he guns down aliens, eerily perfect ducks and dodges in the face of enemy attacks and sheer chutzpah in going one-on-one with the things armed with nothing but a metal rod, is all the more satisfying when you know that it has been dearly bought through hundreds if not thousands of deaths.

What makes this even more entertaining is that not only are the repeated deaths played up for maximal comedic value, you also get to see Cruise as a pre-badass weasely, cowardly shirker. It’s also a lot of fun to watch some of the usual action movie gender tropes being inverted. Emily Blunt’s stoic and hard-and-nails Rita Vrataski comes across as being grittier and tougher than Cage and looks much more at home on the battlefield. In fact, it is Cruise who channels Florence Nightingale here by tending to Blunt’s combat wounds.

I was especially impressed by the subtle dramatic depth of some scenes. One of them has Cage being frustrated by his lack of progress and decides to just take off and have a drink by himself. In other one, Vrataski is visibly skeeved when she realizes that Cage may be using the time manipulation powers to engineer his way into a romantic relationship with her. I would have loved it if the filmmakers had thrown out the unnecessary complications around the Omega alien hiding its location and spent more time on this. Repeatedly feeling the pain of being killed over and over again and watching the people around you die must not be good for sanity. It’s no wonder that he’d feel the need to just chill out once in a while.

There are numerous little nits that I could pick about the plot’s plausibility and one big complaint about how the finale devolves to rather standard action fare. I am also not a fan of the ending. Apparently a much darker ending was originally filmed but it was changed after seeing the response from test audiences. But it’s easy enough to forgive these failings given the usual expectations I have of Hollywood action movies. It helps that the armor does look cool and the aliens look suitably otherworldly and menacing. I’m happy to confirm that this is a fun film that punches above its weight class and is well worth watching.