Edge of Tomorrow is a film in which Tom Cruise dicks about with aliens and everybody
thinks he's mad. What a stretch that must have been for him! Right, I've
already talked about the film and made a shit joke so now it's time for me to go
off topic. God, I hate my life. Like, it's actually fucking shit. I drive to
work where I get bollocked for being crap at my job and then I drive home were
I'm bollocked by my step-mum for still being alive. To be honest, I think that
knowing how much my existence annoys her is all that's stopping me from driving
head on into a fucking wall. Is this getting too grim yet? I suppose it's meant
to be a movie blog and not a suicide note so I'll lighten things up a bit. Hey,
have you ever noticed Tom Cruise's front two teeth? They should be in the
middle of his mouth but they're not. They're actually off to the side for some
reason. I promise that once you see it you'll never un-see it ever again. If
you thought a cult that rapes its followers’ bank balances before treating them
to bullshit secrets about little green men was weird then just wait until you
see Tom Cruise’s smile. Oh, and did I mention that I'm only one bad day away
from slashing my wrists? Sorry, no- ignore that.. It got dark again. We're here
to discuss a film and so that's exactly what we'll do. Have you seen Edge of
Tomorrow yet? I'm thinking of sticking my head in the oven. It's a good
film. It's about a man who has a really shit time every single day and from the
moment he wakes up. How unbearable does that sound? Fuck my life...
Okay, in case you actually don't know what
the film is about then here we go... At some point in the near future, Europe
is invaded by Aliens who promptly decide that they don't want us living here
and so set about making our life a misery. It's actually a very similar set up
to the one me and my step-mum have going on. Tom Cruise is an advertising guy who’s
sent to fight in what we hope to be our final battle in France, after he tries
to blackmail his way out of having to film it. He gets there, he screams, an
alien finds him, his face gets burnt off and he dies. His time on the battle
field was shorter than he is tall, and despite being strapped into a massive
metal kill-suit, he proves himself to be about as useless as a forgotten lump of
turd. Then he wakes up again earlier that morning and relives the whole affair
over and over again only learning how to get slightly further every time he
dies. I suppose Edge of Tomorrow is basically just a sci-fi remake of Groundhog
Day but with less focus on being a romantic-comedy and more on depicting
the variety of violent ways a man can die. The reason Cruise is reliving the
same day is explained at some-point as he teams up with Emily Blunt's hardened
alien killer who is affectionately known as the Full Metal Bitch. In case the
name doesn't give it away, she's actually really cool in this. Having also
previously had Cruise’s power, she recognises the cold dead look in his eye as
being more than just a result of his association with scientology and so sets
about training him to win the war.
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| Same shit, different day. |
To be honest with you, I genuinely love
Cruise as an actor and beyond Knight and Day, I'm still yet to see him
give a bad performance in anything really crap. Regardless of what he gets up
to in his private life, he is a good actor and so unless he's playing himself
or the film is about scientology, then who gives a fuck how he spends his time.
Sure, you could argue that by paying to see one of his movies you're basically
giving him money to help fund his mad cult, but so what? With the amount of
films out there I'm pretty sure that there's also going to be some actors who
have used their movie money to keep drug dealers in business. Should I just not
pay to see any film in case the lead plans on celebrating with an arse full of
cocaine and a tasty bottle of tiger blood? And what about war films? How many
people have joined the army and been killed after being brainwashed into
believing the poetic beauty and implied heroism of Apocalypse Now or The
Hurt Locker. Sure they all present themselves as being anti-war but there's
no denying that to a certain kind of person they do glamorise the idea of being
tarted up in camouflage and then sent for a jolly trek across a minefield.
Where films are concerned, the only thing you can ever do is just take it for
what it is and try to forget any irrelevant details beyond the story and how
well it's told. Regardless though, and I know I'm not the first to make this
joke, but Cruise gives a great performance as the character here who gets shot
in the face over and over and over again. Whether you love him or hate him then
Edge of Tomorrow is definitely the film for you.
As the poster claims, this is from Doug
Liman, the director of The Bourne Identity and is probably his best film
in a good while. To be honest, I actually quite liked his movie Jumper but
there's surely no denying that it was at least a little bit shit. You know you
have problems when you make a film about globe-trotting, teleporters and the
only thing anybody can remember about it is Samuel L Jackson’s bizarre choice
of hair colour. With this though, Liman has found an equally great concept and
actually delivered it in a really competent and exciting way. Beyond the great
action, I think the key to making Edge of Tomorrow work is its humour
with Cruise's variety of girly death screams only getting funnier. There are
times when he gets run over or crushed in which the timing is both so shocking
and hilarious that it's as though Liman has simply incorporated the most fucked
up blooper reel into the narrative of
his film. Remember that bit in Groundhog Day in which Bill Murray
is trying to shag Andie Macdowell and all we get is a montage of her slapping
him? Well, imagine that but with Tom Cruise, aliens, a beach and explosions
instead. As action movies go, this one was actually surprisingly fucking great.
I suppose the last ten minutes started to drag a little bit but so do the last
ten minutes of every action film ever so I guess I can't hold that against it
too much. There's also a ridiculously stupid moment in which Cruise clearly
gets well-and-truly fucked in a plane crash and yet manages to limp away from
it and carry on shooting. However considering how ridiculous the actual story
is, I think it's a complement to the movie that I only thought that moment was
stupid after having apparently bought into the rest of its enjoyably bullshit
set-up.
It's funny too really, as anybody who’s
ever seen a film based on a videogame or played a videogame based on a film
will know, humanity seems to have no clue on how not to make them shit. However
there are a few good computer game movies that are actually great with their
only cunning little trick being that they're not actually based on any computer
games at all. Existenz, Crank and Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
are three examples of this with Edge of Tomorrow now also
joining their exclusive little club. Cruise learns the layout and dangers of
each area he's in and then advances a little further after learning how he'll
next fuck up from his previous death. Have you ever played Dark Souls? I'm
playing it right now and to put it bluntly, that game is a massive fat cunt.
You press start, play for five seconds, die, press start, play for seven
second, die, press start, play for nine seconds and then die. This goes on and
on until you realise that by now you've been playing for three days straight
and are not only still in the same area but you've turned grey and unwittingly nurtured
a stomach ulcer. Dark Souls is, I imagine, a bit like heroin in that
it's clearly not good for your health but is distracting enough from real life
that it becomes really addictive. It's a good game! Anyway, so that's basically
what's going on with Cruise in this film with each fresh start essentially
returning him to his save point before making him do it all again but this time
without dying. You could argue too that as his character develops his
personality and skills, he's also basically levelling up. There's a scene later
on in which Cruise infiltrates a military base that couldn't have been more
video-gamey had it had random buttons pop on screen for us to hammer into a
controller before we throw it against the wall and scream “Bastard!”
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| Seriously though, check out his wonky middle tooth. |
In fact, that exact scene is kind of
similar to when Bill Murray steals the money bags in Groundhog Day, but
if the writers had re-written it with more guns and then injected the script
with steroids. They say that the sign of a great film is one in which you see
your personal baggage reflected back at you and that is definitely true of this
one. In Groundhog Day, Bill Murray's boredom of repetition and
frustration with any lack of progress reminded me of my grim stint in the
shit-pit of being unemployed. Edge of Tomorrow obviously has a similar
vibe going on but for me seems more reminiscent of my life now instead. As
hinted to during my self-pitying, mad ramble at the beginning, it feels like
the grimness is a little non-stop at the minute with work and home being the
mental equivalent of constantly being kicked in the bollocks. The same is true
for Cruise's character who wakes up each morning to the exact same day but
instead of Murray's boredom he just gets a constant barrage of pressure and
stress. However if there's one message that Edge of Tomorrow seems to be
trying to convey it's that if you want things to get better then you'd better
take control... I suppose it made me realise that I guess I need to, too. This
may also have been influenced by a pre-film tough talk that I received from my
friends after they asked me about my day and I told them that a petty turf war
with my Step-Mum over the location of the washing-up basket was about to topple
over into all out warfare. As a result, both them and Edge of Tomorrow
have helped me to realise that if I want things to change then I'll have to get
off my arse and make something happen. Will I look for a new job, go on a college
course, scream at anybody who screams at me or instead simply find a nice tall
building and throw myself off? Well, at this point I know as much as you. I
really do recommend Edge of Tomorrow if you haven't already seen it but
I guess you'll have to come back next time to find out whether Tom Cruise has
just saved my life or pushed me even closer towards suicide. Has a film blog
ever presented such tension? Probably, but I'm doing my best. Thanks for
reading and see you next week... I hope..
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