I feel like writing a movie review so here goes. Last night, when my day had ended, I watched “Edge of Tomorrow” by way of my DVD.com subscription service. I love this service and Netflix, the online streaming movie service, simply does not compare as far I’m concerned. You can’t get obscure movies and the process of selecting a movie, renting, having it for a short period of time, and then giving it back is entirely absent from the Netflix experience which is one of the things I like best about absorbing new material (or simply things I haven’t seen before). Anyway, the movie.

To be honest, I’ve seen better alien flicks. But that’s not what made it a good movie, the genre I mean. This film had traces of movies from across the gamut of films gone by: Aliens, Independence Day, Groundhog Day, The Matrix, Vanilla Sky, to name a few. It was a good movie for several reasons.

1) It didn’t put the star on a pedestal. Tom cruise’s character basically had to surrender any claim to privilege or entitlement right from the get-go and his growing humility throughout the movie is very palpable. Very similar to Groundhog Day in that initially, before their (Bill Murray and Tom Cruise) time loops get going, they are egomaniacs and feel superior to everyone around them but as the film progresses, they shed this sense of superiority and are all the more likable for it.

2) In a way that is difficult to explain, it seems to me that there was somehow a very well-defined and useful sense of space and distance between the filmmakers and the people being filmed. I think that nowadays it is not uncommon for the filmmakers and the people being filmed to get mixed up with each other and for the world of the filmmaker to overrun the world of the people on camera or vice versa. This film to me seemed to have a good sense of balance between the filmers and the filmees. I surmise that this is Doug Liman’s doing. I’ve seen a few of his previous films and, in particular, the movie “Go” also has this nice sense of balance between filmmaker and subject.

3) Say what you want about Tom Cruise but I think he has demonstrated remarkable staying power in a world that sees people come and go like nobody’s business. The man knows how to be on camera and he knows his job. I admit, I still find him compelling after all this time. He doesn’t seem to be clinging to his laurels or trying to pass himself off as a hip old-timer from the 80’s in these 20teens. Tom Cruise really is an OG movie star if you ask me and watching his movies, it’s not hard to tell why he’s still popular. He really puts himself into his performances and it shows.

4) To call this film unsentimental would be a huge understatement. The way it deals with killing the star over and over and over again is a testament to how not-squeamish (for lack of a better word) the filmmakers were about making this movie. Speaking personally, I thought the scene where he rolls under the Army Truck and gets literally run over was pretty disgusting despite the fact that the camera doesn’t show any blood or guts. I suppose one is supposed to take William Cage’s repeated deaths with a grain of salt but I found them a little disturbing. Nevertheless, the willingness, on the part of the filmmakers, to repeatedly depict the star’s death is a courageous kind of moviemaking in my opinion.

5) The pacing. This is the best part of the movie if you ask me. I never found myself yawning or wondering when it was going be over. It did not get caught up in boring dialogue, stupid plot points, or anything else that might have slowed it down. If anything, it moved too fast. But give me a movie that moves too fast over a movie that moves too slowly any day. This movie really moved right along. I could’ve seen it going in another direction fairly easily: like getting into Major William Cage’s head a little bit, maybe have him bemoaning his state of affairs, breaking down one of those interminable and endless days and doing a Johnny Mnemonic: “I want ROOOOOM SERVICE!!!” But it didn’t. You don’t see Tom Cruise freaking out and being bitchy or angry or self-involved, you just see his relentless pursuit of conquest. And he does conquer eventually and his final victory over the alien scum really is very satisfying. Especially when you see that big alien blob inhale the Major’s grenades.

6) The action. Some of the action sequences in this movie were very well done. They weren’t superb like some action movies (the first that comes to my mind is Face-off) but they were good. A Sci-Fi action movie must have good action to be a good movie and some of the scenes really were terrific. They were sort of few and far between actually, those intensely satisfying action sequences but it’s a tough toss-up between too much action (which makes a movie seem low-brow) and not enough (which makes a movie [or can make a movie] seem cerebral). I think a particularly good scene was in the farmhouse when the helicopter takes off and the Major gets driven through a brick wall on top of a car. That one sticks out in my mind. I also think this is Doug Liman’s doing, he did “The Bourne Identity” which was a truly stellar action flick and he knows action movies.

7) Last but not least: Emily Blunt. She really impressed me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her on screen before this movie. She had a very reserved, tough quality but not overly aggressive or butch by any means. In fact, if this movie had any failings, I would say that it did not put enough focus on her. In my opinion, she was right on par with Ellen Ripley from Alien in being a bossy, sexy, action Sci-Fi space babe. LOL. But seriously, I think she was very good in this role (if a little one-dimensional) and her presence really cemented its being a hit for Tom Cruise. I think without her, the movie wouldn’t have flown.

So “Edge of Tomorrow” stands out among other movies of its day to me because it has something that others don’t, a certain cohesive gel that so many (almost all) movies that have come out in the 20teens just don’t have for some reason. New movies are all basically like old movies more or less: they have some cool special effects, star studded casts, interesting clever dialogue, and million dollar budgets but to me, they all seem like they’re missing something key (like peak 37 in Medicine Man) that causes them to just fall flat when you really come right down to it. In my opinion, this movie had that thing (at least a little bit of it) that all the movies coming out these days don’t have. Go check it out. 🙂