Edge of Tomorrow

It takes only one action scene to appreciate the visual splendor of Edge of Tomorrow, even if the overall impact makes you wish there was more substance beneath the spectacle.

That dazzling immersive sequence involves a chaotic and deadly beachfront battle sometime in the future between human soldiers and an alien race of deadly monsters. It’s repeated in different variations throughout the film.

This post-apocalyptic variation on Groundhog Day is the latest big-budget vehicle for Tom Cruise, who smooths out some of the rough patches with his action-hero charisma.

Cruise stars as Cage, an American military officer who heads to Europe to help with tactics and technology in a war between humans and Mimics — lightning-fast amphibious shapeshifters with plenty of teeth and tentacles. But instead of assisting behind-the-scenes, he is sent to the front lines to lead a mission in which his troops are hopelessly overmatched.

However, through contact with one of the aliens, Cage is given the power to repeat the same miserable day again and again, something he originally sees as a curse before realizing it could hold the key to winning the war. He meets a special-forces agent (Emily Blunt) who holds the secret that could save the human race.

For better or worse, the film adopts a video-game mentality, replicating the experience of reaching the same difficult level several times before figuring out a way to advance before exhausting all of your lives or starting over from the beginning.

The screenplay, which is based on a novel by Japanese writer Hiroshi Sakurazaka, keeps the pace lively in a rather transparent attempt to cover the plot holes and to disguise the lack of any meaningful character development along the way. However, it smartly injects some humor so the central time-loop gimmick isn’t taken so seriously.

The visuals are often thrilling, whether it’s director Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity) throwing fireballs and everything else at the screen to make the 3D crowd jump, or the vivid depiction of the futuristic landscape, or the imaginative creatures and technological gadgets on both sides of the war.

There’s nothing very provocative about Edge of Tomorrow, which is intended not as some sort of sci-fi cautionary tale, but rather as a feast for the senses that doesn’t tax the brain. It succeeds on those modest terms, yet it’s certainly not worth repeating over and over.

Rated PG-13, 113 minutes.