Edge of Tomorrow

Of all the occasions to experience a ‘Groundhog Day’, the endless reliving of the same period ad nauseam, Armageddon surely tops the list of those best avoided.

So spare a thought for Major Bill Cage, a silver-tongued military spin doctor, reluctantly drafted on to the frontline of humanity’s ill-fated D-Day against an unstoppable force of whizzing, whirring alien invaders named Mimics – only to be doomed to relive the slaughter over and over and over again.

Major Cage is the latest big-screen outing of Tom Cruise, a prodigiously watchable Hollywood megastar who recently has been struggling to recapture his early flair. But Cage isn’t your usual Cruise. Rather than being your typical box-fresh Hollywood meathead, who steps into the first scene ready for anything, alien or otherwise, Cage is quite the opposite: an everyday malingerer who must learn to be a hero via endless trial and error.

It is all rather refreshing – and for other reasons, too, chief among them the fact that the real muscle comes courtesy of a woman, English actress Emily Blunt, who plays Sergeant Rita Vrataski, the victorious heroine of a previous Mimic melee.

Britain also plays a starring role. As in the early 1940s, our island stands alone as the enemy masses on the French coast. Pints are sipped in city pubs and Heathrow Airport has become a military base. Cage disembarks from a helicopter in Trafalgar Square and for a moment I thought I might even catch a glimpse of The Lady.

Indeed, it is surely no coincidence that in this, Operation Overlord’s 70th anniversary year, the film’s key sequence is a science-fiction re-run of D-Day. The main battle is even fought on the beaches of Normandy. But then this is a film that pilfers, unashamedly. Throughout, there are echoes of science-fiction classics from Aliens to Starship Troopers. The beach landings recall Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. Even the central concept – a single day, endlessly relived – has been a well-trodden trope since 1993 comedy classic, Groundhog Day.

Not that it matters. In the hands of director Doug Liman, whose credits include The Bourne Identity, the film combines these elements to great effect, blending mayhem, humour, braggadocio and just enough good sense and intrigue to keep bottoms on seat edges throughout.

This is a highly entertaining action film that raids the cinematic store cupboard and dares to be different with the ingredients. There’s just one problem – apart from the very noisy soundtrack (think: Crash, Bang, Wallop, Repeat). While the film suggests that it takes craven Cage many thousands of lives to become a Real Man, you can’t help but be reminded that the rest of us get only one. We’d better make the most of it.