People in the movie: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton, Brendan Gleeson, CGI Aliens
In this film, Tom Cruise plays a military officer who is forced to go into battle against an alien attack, in spite of the fact that he has never once in his career been on the battlefield. He is quickly overcome and killed, but an exposure to the alien race’s blood gives him their temporal ability and every time he dies, he starts the day over.
His warnings of the battle turning into a slaughter fall on deaf ears, so he enlists the help of Emily Blunt, who once had the same exposure and time anomaly as he did. She agrees to train him for the battle and help him end the siege of the alien race.
*Spoiler Alert* From the trailers and the plot description, one might think this movie is a cross between “Independence Day” and “Groundhog Day,” and for the most part, they would be right. Depending on how you look at it, this can be either a good thing or a bad thing, or both.
All genres have recurring themes and plot devices. For example you have the boy meets girl and the tomfoolery ensues of the romantic comedy, Michael Bay’s gratuitous explosions which are still awesome, and the masked killer kills teenagers found in horror. The time loop is a familiar plot device in science fiction found in short stories such as “Double and Redoubled” by Malcolm Jameson first printed in 1941, television such as an episode of Star Trek TNG entitled “Cause and Effect,” and, of course, films such as “Groundhog Day.” Like all plot devices, the time loop has its uses and can lead to some creative storytelling and interesting character development (two big things I look for,) but can be limiting to plot development and can easily become cliché and predictable, which many audiences balk at.
Even though the audience knows what it’s going to get with this movie, given that it is a summer action flick, the plot is a solid one, and the film moves nicely from beginning to end. The movie doesn’t attempt to answer any of the “big questions” such as where the aliens came from, what do they want with us, how do they reproduce, what do they like on their pizza, etc. Exposition such as this can be interesting, but can very easily slow the movie down and lose its audience, as I believe it would have in this movie. The action sequences were well done with steady camera angles and solid visual effects, and were done without making the audience feel over saturated with eye candy.
The character development in the film was very interesting. With Cruise’s character, we see his growth from pencil pushing softie to steel balled bad-ass through the film, as well as the toll taken on him by constant training and fighting. With Emily Blunt’s character, the film does a good job showing that she is a constant in the recurring day; we learn more about her as the film progresses, but she doesn’t have the same wear and tear as Cruise, since she is that constant.
As far as summer films go, this is a pretty good one. Some might say that the powered combat suits was just eye candy and unnecessary, but I look at it like this: Were the needed? Maybe not. Were they cool? Yup. Did they take away from the movie? Not really, so why not? This is a movie I would recommend trying to catch while it’s still in theaters, but should work well in home theater as well.
