Edge of Tomorrow

Science fiction set during an invasion. Cage is not an officer but a spokesman. He represents the army on television, and when he refuses to go to the front he is stripped of rank and thrown into a unit as a private. The next morning he is put into the landing. He has had no training, does not even know how to release his suit, and dies within minutes. Then he wakes up on the same morning. From there the film is a repetition. Cage lives the same day over and over, gets a little further each time, and dies each time. A woman recognises what is happening. Rita has been through it before and knows what he has to do; she trains him. What the narrative is interested in is not time but practice: the film shows how a soldier is made not by shortening it but by repeating it, and often uses that as comedy. The deaths are cut and restarted, and that rhythm carries the humour. The narrative builds the character as unpleasant at the outset. Cage is cowardly, dishonest and useless, so the change is earned. The suits were built for real and the actors wore them; they were heavy and awkward, which added to the reality of the movement. The source is a Japanese novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. The ending departs from the source and is its most criticised feature. Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton and Brendan Gleeson are in the cast. Doug Liman directed. Who it is for: anyone who wants action science fiction with a tightly built idea. Who it is not for: anyone looking for consistency at the end; the narrative bends its own rule in the last section.