Director: Doug Liman
Year Released: 2014
Rating: 0.5
Who thought this pitch would work: "it's Groundhog Day meets Inception meets The Matrix meets video game culture! Great mix, right?" Inexperienced soldier Cage (Tom Cruise), in a future overrun by tentacle-monsters, has to keep dying and coming back to life in order to gain enough knowledge of the complicated enemy in order to avoid a D-Day (Version 2.0) massacre - there to help is a 'full metal bitch' (Emily Blunt), who does well with a sword. Watching the movie jump back every time Cruise screws up his mission coupled with the movie's incessant changing of its own rules mid-stage (see: Inception) make this a frustrating experience - though I'm not that big a fan of Groundhog Day, at least it was cheerful in a Zen sort-of way (buoyed by Bill Murray as Bill Murray), while this is the result of people who watched that movie and thought it would work in a Sci-Fi WWII setting. The last half-hour is particularly dark and busy and via umpteen contrivances and less-than-groundbreaking 'discoveries,' it turns out the source of all the trouble was in the Louvre ... but I guess that's because the writers were familiar with The Da Vinci Code.
