Edge of Tomorrow is a monumentally awesome picture. I loved it. See it.

What is it? It’s essentially a wartime thriller set in a dystopian near future where whip-quick spider-clump aliens have taken over Europe. Tom Cruise plays Cage, a U.S. Army major specializing in media relations. He’s an unabashed coward, slickster and essentially a draft dodger whose rank means little. As the film opens, the commander of the London-based Universal Defense Force orders Cage to join a D-Day-esque beach assault. Yellow bellies are shown, and Cruise ends up handcuffed, stripped of his rank, and processed as a private in the invasion force. But when he dies on the beach he awakens back at base — and quickly discovers he’s cursed to re-live the invasion over and over and over, resetting to base camp whenever he dies. (It’s “live, die, repeat,” as the film’s poster helpfully proclaims.)

In action-sci-fi terms this could go pretty wrong pretty quickly, but director Doug Liman keeps it clean, tight, and real. And I love realistic sci fi — like the alien ghetto in District 9, or the imperfect futures of, say, Minority Report, Sunshine, Dredd, or Her. Edge of Tomorrow has a similar feel. The “mimics” are truly weird, truly alien, and quite terrifying, which is in itself pretty shocking given that cinematic depiction of space beings is a well-trodden road indeed. (The “alpha” mimics in particular whipsaw about like ghouls in a zeitgeisty jump-cut horror feature, glowing pale blue and breathing a constant wide-jawed exhale that crackles like a bunsen burner in the wind. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s great.)

And Tom Cruise dies. Again, and again, and again. This Source Code-style iterative loop framework sets the stage for some nice comic relief, and a couple of well-timed Cruise-deaths lighten the mood. (Yes, I typed that.) But it also permits a clever and interesting storyline. On the battlefield Cruise meets Emily Blunt’s “Angel of Verdun” — a legendary special forces soldier who killed 100 mimics in a single battle, who now graces recruitment posters, and whom soldiers call the “Full Metal Bitch.” Like a Jolt-fueled gamer armed with unending do-overs, under her tutelage Cruise uses his effective immortality to slowly learn and eventually ace the beach landing. And there’s more, besides. This is a smart movie with an engaging story, and it mines some real gold from its central premise.

The best part about Edge of Tomorrow is the way it subtly pokes fun at every other action movie around. This is because the unending Mulligans offer a rare chance for the ultimate in realism: Failure. We all know James Bond will land his motorcycle jump perfectly the first time, and that Iron Man will fly just so through a narrowing gap. Hollywood for obvious reasons rarely shows protagonists screwing up and dying out of nowhere, randomly getting run over by trucks, or flatly failing at their missions. Only a do-over film can afford to show iterative baby-step attempts, and this gives Edge of Tomorrow both a strong realism and protagonists with whom we can really identify. Practice really does make perfect, as any gamer knows, and Edge of Tomorrow shows us the countless trial-and-error screw ups it would really take to put together a typical action scene. And when Cruise pulls off a sweet action sequence, we know what it took to get him there.

A do-over film needs to at least attempt a decent explanation for its credibility-straining central premise, and Edge of Tomorrow does this as nicely as any. Disbelief is suspended. Rules are set, and stuck to.

And Cruise is great here. Not over the top, as he can sometimes be — he’s subtle, nuanced, eminently watchable. I loved the imagery surrounding Emily Blunt’s hardened soldier. She’s terrific here too, really iconic stuff. And she looks oh so tactical, doing her tactical yoga. (It’s quite possibly worth loitering outside Comic Con this fall just to see if any fangirls can pull off the look.) Bill Paxton and the supporting cast are strong as well, but, you know, I’m not going to San Diego for those outfits.

Edge of Tomorrow is self-consciously heavy on WWI and WWII imagery — infantry beach landings in France? The Battle of Verdun? Even the Angel of Verdun? Surprised Franz Ferdinand wasn’t motoring around in his open-topped Graf & Stift — but it works. I could have done without the opening newsreel montage — I think the presence of aliens on earth is amply evident as the film gets going — but it’s a small complaint. The bigger problem of course is the glossing over of just how much lockstep-perfect stuff Cruise must reproduce in each fresh day. Exact duplicates of any day are only reproducible in a world without entropy. Butterfly wings sit still, here.

For those of you interested in this sort of thing, Edge of Tomorrow is loosely based on a Japanese novella called All You Need is Kill, which I haven’t read and likely won’t, but there you go. I’m here for the film, and what a film it is: Great movie, great characters, great aliens, great ending, great mood. Edge of Tomorrow shatters expectations. It’s a must-see.

Haus Verdict: What could have been bloated, vapid sci-fluff instead emerges a smart, funny war thriller and a new personal favorite.