Despite a massive effort to coordinate military action and the development of exo-skeletal powered suits that allow infantry to bring vehicle scale weapons to the fight there has been but one small victory led by Sgt. Rita Vratasky (Emily Blunt), the "Angel of Verdun".
Sgt. Vrataski's signature weapon is a helicopter rotor blade that she wields like a sword and her image is everywhere.
US Army Media relations officer Maj. William Cage (Tom Cruise) is summoned to London to cover the upcoming massive assault on Northern France, Operation Downfall, from the battlefront.
Cage is a coward and tries to twist out of then refuses the order, finds himself arrested for desertion and shipped off to the forward operating base to be sent into battle: the very thing he was trying to avoid. He does not live long.
CW: suicide
This takes the tropes of time loop movies and mashes them up with Starship Troopers style alien monster fighting sci-fi themed action.
It's great.
Cage lives the same day again and again fighting the unwinnable battle kind of unwillingly until he interacts with Sgt. Vrataski and gets schooled in what's going on.
The familiar beats of time loop stuff are all there: initial confusion, "this going to sound crazy but...", becoming a better person, figuring detailed step by step plans to accomplish amazing things, getting burned out and going on the lam for a bit, training montages etc etc
Which it does with big action sequences and a degree of wit. Cruise and Blunt have decent chemistry and while it's a Cruise vehicle she gets a lot of screen time as the actual badass that's using his unique situation to win the unwinnable war.
The only slight niggle is, as the movie progresses they have Vrataski treat Cage more and more like she already knows him. Yes she knows what's happening but every day she's meeting him for the first time. It's a necessary narrative device to reduce the endless getting to know you bullshit you'd otherwise have but it sticks out if you think about it.
The grungey military tech is nicely designed and presented in a kind of "fifteen minutes into the future" style and there's the minimal of technobabble used to explain things. The aliens are very much a blur of tentacular CGI fury and that makes a good contrast with the stomping human infantry.
One of the best bits of action movie fodder of the last decade. It's smart enough to make you pay attention without "trying to be smart". Highly recommended 9/10.