"Starship Troopers meets Groundhog Day" is an oddly accurate summary for Edge of Tomorrow starring Tom Cruise.
Tom Cruise plays a smug and selfish Major who has no combat experience or training. His job has been marketing military actions to the public. The situation is pretty dire, as an alien force has established a beachhead on earth (specifically Eurasia) and all opposition has completely failed. While ordered to the front lines for a final offensive, Tom gets doused in alien blood that sends him back to the start of the day before.
We witness, and re-witness, the same two days playing out again and again, as Tom learns what he should do, and shouldn't do, to try and save himself. While everyone else resets to their former selves, we see Tom mature and grasp the bigger picture.
Luckily he's not alone. Emily Blunt plays a tough-as-nails hero who went through the very same thing he's experiencing. She teaches him to learn and fight and use his resets to gain supernatural advantage. Oh and she also repeatedly shoots him in the head to force a reset.
Groundhog Day was designed to make the audience feel the pain of "Oh no! Again?!". It made you empathize with Bill Murray's frustration. This movie thankfully doesn't go that route. Instead it becomes clear we're going to breeze through the drudgery of the same events if nothing changes, eventually skipping them all together. We begin to see just the differences, and that's very effective for this story.
The Good: Quite enjoyable movie! Great battles. Vicious aliens. A dash of humour. Also, Tom Cruise repeatedly shot in the head. The Bad: I don't understand why the military was shooting Tom and Emily after talking to the General The Ugly: Ignore the last reset. It didn't happen. You'll understand why when you see it.
This is not like other movies that involve time travel. There's no paradox here, because essentially the universe resets whenever Tom dies, like a video game.
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