Edge of Tomorrow Review
Groundhog Day just got real.
SPOILERS INCOMING I’m going to have a hard time doing this review without spoilers so feel free to skip ahead to the last paragraph where I highly recommend this movie. This film managed to meet almost all of my hopes and expectations. It had a solid script, the hardest core science fiction you can possible get, excellent acting, edge of the seat action, and literally the latest and greatest in CGI and special effects. I would say this film is 95% of an awesome movie, and that the bad 5% comes in at the last 5 minutes.
The ending, while very (very, very, very) Hollywood caught me so off guard that I had to look at the source material, All You Need is Kill by Hiroshi Sikurazaka to see how much they changed the ending. However the original story is that very special Japanese sci fi that is to sci fi what Forbidden Planet is to regular movies. Uber sci fi and somehow always seems to involve monsters with tentacles. No help from there really.
As I have said before time travel as a plot device is a tricky beast, always waiting to jump up and bite you on the nuts. It can be done badly easily and using it correctly is the sign of a talented writer and director. The problem is time travel by its very nature has massive plot holes built in and if not treated right these holes can swallow your script. The time travel device here (resetting your day like in the movie Groundhog Day, or in every other sci fi series ever including Stargate SG1 and Supernatural) manages to avoid a lot of that pesky “conservation of mass and energy” business. Of course since human memory is theoretically chemical how memories can survive traveling back is still an issue, but this film managed to avoid that problem and the rest of the time paradox issues by more or less ignoring them.
