This movie doesn't give much away to start with. Tom Cruise stars as smarmy military PR man Major Bill Cage and Emily Blunt stars as the mysterious war hero and army poster girl Rita Vrataski in a futuristic world at war with an alien life-form that's taken over most of Europe.
It's hard to work out how the two come together -- or how on Earth you'll begin to like Cruise, whose character is working on PR to avoid the frontline himself -- but things move along swiftly.
The audience is left wondering if this is a futuristic action Groundhog Day, minus Bill Murray.
And in a way it is -- and done very, very well.
Cruise's cowardly character finds himself dumped in a war scene not unlike a Battle of Normandy where everyone, including himself, is slaughtered.