Edge Of Tomorrow
Saving Private Dyin’
Release Date: OUT NOW!
2014 | 12A | 113 minutes | £ 24.99 ( Blu- ray)/£ 19.99 ( DVD) Distributor: Warner Home Video Director: Doug Liman Cast: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Brendan Gleeson, Bill Paxton
So what wounded
the clever, thrilling Edge Of Tomorrow at the box office? The diminishing wattage of Tom Cruise’s star power? Or that ferociously focusgrouped title, surely belonging to some Meryl Streep heartbreaker about the power of love and the limits of modern medicine?
This home release scrambles to fix at least one of those things: the cover now shouts the words “Live Die Repeat”, a rebranding exercise that injects belated adrenaline while isolating the killer concept at the heart of this time- warping war story.
Cruise is William Cage, a military publicity officer railroaded into combat as mankind prepares for its final push against an invading alien force. Launched into a beachhead hellstorm of mud, fire and clanking armoured exo- suits, Cruise discovers he has the power to rewind time, cheating death only to face it over and over again. Teaming with Emily Blunt – chilly, pragmatic and brilliant as the “Full Metal Bitch” – he begins to fight on a 4D front.
There’s a constant tension between Cruise the actor and Cruise the star. He’s infinitely more interesting as the slippery, yellowbellied Cage we first encounter, but his inescapable A- list gravity – summoning all those Top Gun echoes of toothsome jockishness – tilts the character from slimy coward to smartest guy in the room to, finally, superhero.
The invaders never quite convince as anything other than flickering bursts of unreal videogame cannon fodder, but this smartly- scripted film remembers that the best FX are narrative ones – though once you’ve marvelled at its construction first time around you wonder how much replay value it packs. Ironic, that…
Extras: The DVD has two short featurettes on the aliens and the weapons ( 13 minutes). The Blu- ray ( rated) adds a 40- minute discussion with Doug Liman, an eightminute bit on the beachhead scenes, and more goodies including seven deleted scenes. Nick Setchfield The film was originally titled All You Need Is Kill after the book that spawned it, only for the studio to fret over “negative chatter” about the word kill.