The Longest Groundhog D-Day (now with Space Invaders!)

On a whim, I just finished watching a movie called Edge of Tomorrow, which sounds like it should be a soapish melodrama but is in reality a slick, high production value blend of Alien, Starship Troopers, the first fifteen minutes of Saving Private Ryan and the most intense FPS video game you've ever spent 36 straight hours playing, in your underwear.

It stars Tom Cruise--but hear me out--as an insincere, slippery and cowardly PR type guy for the Global Military who gets railroaded onto the front line of the New Normandy Invasion, to take back Continental Europe from the nasty and fierce tentacular aliens who've got the run of the place (not that you'd notice), along with a vast army of soldiers in heavily armed exoskeleton suits. He, of course, has never seen battle and nor has he the moonlit shadow of a clue. Do I have your attention yet?

Due to some scriptwriting sleight-of-hand that I'll spare you, as soon as he dies in the debacle (and it is soon), his day starts all over again in the manner of Groundhog Day but without the smug humor. So, as day follows day, follows day, etc., he becomes quite proficient, less self-centered and almost human, or as human as you can imagine Tom Cruise being, even taking into account suspended disbelief.

The obvious parallel with video gaming, where you progress through impossible situations against insurmountable enemies through repetition, memory and just plain trying different stuff is not as annoying as you might think and the tension remains high even though you know that death just means starting all over at level one. In fact, they use this rather effectively to fill in the backstory, advance the plot and, as much as can be said for a SciFi action flick, develop the characters. I'm sure that if I stopped to think about it, I'd find all sorts of plot holes with the time looping, but in the moment, it works well enough to draw you into the action. In fact, I feel exhausted, as if I'd just played my way through all 50 levels non-stop for 36 hours, in my underwear.

Oh, and you'll never guess where the Queen Monster is hiding...

That's all I'll give you to avoid stepping over into the dreaded spoiler zone. Any red-blooded male with an ounce of warrior self respect in him would enjoy this movie (and even though it is a Tom Cruise vehicle, it contains no homer-erotic subtext) but since the gals and Severely, which is to say, the gals, surely won't be watching this flick anytime soon, I'll throw you ladies a bone, below the fold: