Edge of Tomorrow is the best movie there is about what it’s like to be Tom Cruise

polygon.com:

There are no other movie stars like Tom Cruise. And despite his litany of hits across an over 40-year career, there’s no better movie to explain his stardom than 2014’s Edge of Tomorrow.

Director Doug Liman’s future-set action movie about humanity’s war with robots casts Cruise daringly against type as Cage, a stiff bureaucrat in a suit, terrified, cruel, cowardly, and almost completely incapable… at least, at first. But when he suddenly gets the power to reset to a certain moment in time when he dies (and with a little training from Emily Blunt’s legendary war hero), he slowly begins to learn how to fight, how to lead, and how to win the war. It’s basically Groundhog Day with robots, guns, and giant swords.

But beyond just being an incredibly kickass action movie — which it is — Edge of Tomorrow is also an incredible deconstruction of Cruise as an actor. For years, Cruise’s on-screen MO has been effortless charm and talent. He was a brilliant lawyer who won an impossible case the instant he decided to try in A Few Good Men, he was a pool shark who could beat the pros in The Color of Money, and he was the best pilot at a school full of the best pilots in Top Gun. But Edge of Tomorrow was the first movie to let us in on a secret Cruise would spend the entire decade after exploring: Appearing effortless takes a tremendous amount of work.

Edge of Tomorrow is like a movie made of behind-the-scenes footage. It’s the cinema of grueling, endless hard work, and the incremental improvements determination can get you. Cage dies over and over and over again. His development as a savior of humanity is, like anyone’s development at anything, decidedly nonlinear. Sometimes he makes genuine progress, getting a few feet further into the battlefield before the robots mow him down. Other times, he tries something new and dies faster than he ever has before. But even in those failures, Cruise’s trademark focus comes through — in his tight-lipped sneers or the way he tenses his jaw