EDGE OF TOMORROW (2014)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*

Aside from sporting a name that sounds like a sixties soap opera, EDGE OF TOMORROW is a decent adaptation of the Japanese light novel ALL YOU NEED IS KILL, by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. I read KILL five or six years ago, and I remember only two items. The novel concerned (1) a human soldier who was projected into a recurring time loop thanks to accidental contact with a "Mimic," one of the inhuman creatures who've invaded Earth, and (2) the time loops allowed the hero to master a particular martial skill by dint of multiple repetitions, which was loosely compared to the way samurais practice their sword-swings over and over to attain superiority.

I can't speak to the characterization of the main hero, but William Cage (Tom Cruise) has a refreshingly unlikeable personality at the outset. Even though humanity is threatened with extinction by the Mimics, Cage has wangled an officer-position in the army's publicity department so that he can avoid risking his neck in combat. However, a commanding officer takes such a dislike to Cage that the officer frames Cage with desertion and rewrites his military history so that Cage is scheduled to ship out with the infantry. And Cage perish in combat-- except, as noted above, he's exposed to the blood of a particular type of Mimic. He then gets a temporal reprieve from his own death, for he's absorbed the Mimic's unique ability to reboot its own timeline. From then on, every time Cage is killed, under any circumstances, he simply shifts back to the point when he was inducted into the infantry. This allows him all the time he needs to self-train, so that he remembers all of the experiences in his previous "lives." More importantly, he realizes he's not the only human who went through this experience, and that the Mimics control a power that will inevitably doom humanity.

For the film's first hour or so, the script shows great facility with the permutations of the hero's "Groundhog Day" predicament, challenging the viewer to guess how Cage will find some way to master his situation. As in the novel, Cage learns that a famous fighter of the resistance, Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), went through a similar experience, but lost her time-shifting ability over time. Rita also gives Cage the benefit of her combat experience, with the unusual habit of temporarily "killing" Cage whenever he's too incapacitated to continue fighting, so that he'll reboot again and compensate for past failures.

EDGE is largely a two-character film, and Blunt does her best to play off Cage as he develops greater altruism, while still keeping his breezy charm. Still, EDGE is structured mostly as a star turn for Tom Cruise, and it does that reasonably well. Still, the script begins to run out of steam in the last half hour, despite continuing to throw new developments at the viewer. EDGE is a solid piece of craftsmanship, and made good box office thanks to the Cruise name, but having watched it twice, I doubt I'll ever do so again.