Doug Liman and Tom Cruise‘s All You Need Is Kill, based on a Japanese scifi “light” novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, uses a Groundhog Day approach to violent action thrillers. Question: When is Cruise going to suck in the fact that he’s a half-century old and that it’s time to become the guy Harrison Ford was in the ’90s? An action star, I mean, but not the Energizer Bunny.

Tom Cruise as Lt. Col. Bill Cage in Doug Liman’s All You Need Is Kill.

Cruise’s Lt. Col. Bill Cage “is dropped — untrained and ill-equipped — into what amounts to little more than a suicide mission, [and] is killed within minutes. But Cage awakens back at the beginning of the same hellish day, and is forced to fight and die again…and again. Direct physical contact with the alien has thrown him into a time loop, dooming him to live out the same brutal combat over and over.”

Emily Blunt and Bill Paxton costar.