- EDGE OF TOMORROW Watching Tom Cruise die over and over makes for entertaining cinema.
For most of his career, Tom Cruise has played Intense Perfect Men. From Reacher to Oblivion to the Mission: Impossible series, the men Cruise plays know everything, they're in peak physical condition, and they never fuck up. In other words, they're boring—and often irritating—to watch. That's why, early in Edge of Tomorrow, when Cruise, as Major William Cage, is revealed as a shiftless coward with no moral center, I let out a full-body sigh of relief.
Edge of Tomorrow's premise is established in a quick expository dump: Most of Europe has been lost to alien invaders, and a UN force gathers in the south of England to prepare for one final D-day-like assault on the mainland, with the fate of humanity at stake. Somehow Cage, as a PR flack for the military, winds up on the front lines.
