EDGE OF TOMORROW [2014]

WOOF!

Must admit to being totally perplexed at the consistently high ratings this derivative, cliched and rather dull film is getting.  The battle scenes are like watching a video game with no sense of danger or suspense attempted.  The film's internal logic doesn't make any sense.  For one example: during the first 5 or 10 minutes of the film, it's endlessly established that Tom Cruise's character has been appearing on apparently every television news program as the face of the war's propaganda initiative selling the war to the public.  Cruise's character has been the go-to interviewee for the previous several years.  But when the General dumps Cruise's character into the frontline troops with the cooked-up story of being a deserter -- NO ONE RECOGNIZES HIM.  This guy who has been the public face of the war's propaganda initiative is not recognized by anyone.  

Then we get to the endless cliches and outright steals from any number of better movies.  The cliches are running almost non-stop; from the ridiculous "finding the car keys in the visor" scene to the "explosion lands the heroine face-to-face on top of the hero" scene, it seemed to me like every scene in EDGE OF TOMORROW is taken from another (and better) film.  From J Squad wanting soooo much to be like the platoon from ALIENS (even going so far as casting Bill Paxton) to placing the secret maguffin underneath the Louvre's I.M. Pei pyramid (THE DA VINCI CODE, anyone???) to the boldface lifting of the alien mimics directly from the MATRIX movies, this film is like an arcade claw game; plucking scenes from movie after movie in a vain attempt to make something of itself.  This is one dopey, lazy, ingenuous excuse for a film.