Tom Cruise does start off playing a coward here, shanghaied into service as unstoppable aliens sweep the Earth, but never mind the fact that you know that won't last long. What's initially more alarming is the fear that this will be no more than gung-ho grunts again playing with very big guns (now they've got exoskeletons too, like all good future soldiers do these days) and one tiresome explosion after another. All of which does of course come to pass. Yet it's quite compelling stuff, simply for the key idea: each time Cruise dies on the battlefield, he wakes up at the start of the same day, and that day is a lot harder to get through than its
Groundhog Day template, as each time he has to mechanically execute the same actions just to get further to some hoped-for goal. In other words, there isn't a sense of free will: it feels like a Sisyphean hell.
Naturally, since the mission-style scenario, and even the look of the weapons and aliens are straight out of countless FPS games, you have to wonder whether the writers were fully aware of the film's vulnerability to scorn by presenting a narrative guided by scenes set in stone as, in effect, gaming save/respawn points. Nevertheless, it's a riveting ride.
6/10
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