![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() There are a few intriguing and even provocative plot points scattered throughout the consistently belabored setup, like how only 20% of the conscripted future-oriented soldiers return alive to the year 2022. This is especially deadly given that most viewers will be watching the 140-minute Paramount studio pic at home through Prime Video. What really sinks “The Tomorrow War” is how simultaneously impersonal and demanding the movie often feels. Pratt also smolders well enough, in a Harrison Ford kind of way, that you can easily believe that Dan really is paying attention and thinking seriously about how he can better relate with his hard-assed fellow soldier Dorian (Edwin Hodge) and his estranged father James (Simmons). Forester takes inspiration not only from the reluctant (and initially terrified) men he serves with, but also from his family members, particularly his wide-eyed young daughter Muri (Ryan Kiera Armstrong, “American Horror Story”) and his equally impressionable fellow draftee Charlie (Richardson). There are also a few moments where you can see why they cast Pratt, playing to type as another super-adaptable everyman, as the movie’s lead. More immediately, it’s a dud because of its more-covered-than-directed set pieces and a lot of silly-but-deadly-serious dialogue. To be clear: “The Tomorrow War” isn’t just a dud because of its pseudo-apolitical ideas about both domestic and military service. Those are the blockbusters that’s fall flat every time.‘The Tomorrow War’ Teaser: Chris Pratt Time Travels to Fight Aliens (Video) I mind that it assumes its priorities should be in the set pieces even if those set pieces don’t entertain or illuminate character. I don’t mind that The Tomorrow War never fully grasps the paradoxes its time travel creates or even that it’s yet another action movie that doesn’t know how to utilize Pratt. It has good ideas and then builds on that foundation rather than casting them aside for the next round of explosions. It builds real emotional stakes without needing a character to explain why there should be emotional stakes. It has a compelling protagonist with a clear arc of going from a coward to a hero. Watching The Tomorrow War, my mind kept flashing back to Edge of Tomorrow, another sci-fi action film involving time travel, but one that does everything right. Even the story about fathers and children doesn’t really work because while Dan makes an important discovery in the future, it’s revealed through dry exposition rather than doing anything more in the first act that hint that Dan’s family life may be less than ideal. Chris Pratt is an actor with terrific comic timing, and they give him very few jokes (other action films seem to keep missing that the reason he was so good in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies is that Star-Lord is kind of a goof/screw-up but films like Jurassic World, The Magnificent Seven, and now The Tomorrow War want him to be a square-jawed hero who occasionally gets a laugh line). The premise itself is a sound climate change parable (it is our job to save the future for our children or else there won’t be a world left), but The Tomorrow War never explores it. The Tomorrow War is a film that’s constantly threatening to be interesting before running back to the comfort of tough guys shooting guns at CGI monsters. RELATED: Chris Pratt Almost Gives Away ‘The Tomorrow War’ Secrets in Set Tour Video ![]()
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