The second film adaptation of Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s 2004 eponymous novel, this new one is considerably inferior to Edge of Tomorrow from 2014, Tom Cruise’s own Groundhog D1ay with mechs. It’s not a question of budget or aesthetics – simply a gaping hole of engaging characterisation and inner spark that makes this time loop a grinding chore, rather than a thrilling jailbreak from eternal recurrence.
Directors Ken’ichirô Akimoto and Yukinori Nakamura do, to be fair, switch things up. Instead of the original story’s extraterrestrial “Mimics”, they concoct an entirely new big bad: a dormant alien flower, nattily named Darol, that one day begins spitting out what look like killer nasturtiums. The protagonists have been swapped: the point of view in this version is Rita (voiced by Ai Mikami), the female badass working for the United Defense Force that surveys the colossal plant. Exposure to its quartz spores are what forces her to live her imperfect day over and over.
After using her first run-throughs to variously put as much distance between Darol and herself as possible, attempt to take her own life, then level up her combat skills, she finally meets another looper, hapless nerd Keiji (Natsuki Hanae). The gamified narrative essentially follows the same track as Edge of Tomorrow, with the pair slowly upgrading their skills and equipment until they’re on level pegging with the flower power. But, aligned with the downbeat Rita as we are, there’s a stronger emphasis on despair and futility similar to the existential rut Bill Murray’s Phil Connors hits in Groundhog Day.
It might work if Rita was a more appealing protagonist, capable of wringing out gallows humour or personal tragedy from her predicament. Apart from an unconvincingly dumped backstory about parental abuse, though, she is largely a vehement-looking blank, and this version lacks Cruise and Emily Blunt’s deft interplay. In the end, it squanders Studio 4°C’s sharp visuals with idiosyncratic angular character models and a bloom of garish colours for the hothouse invader. Overblown weirdness and philosophical sideshoots are areas in which an anime rework could have topped Hollywood – but there are sadly little on show here.
• All You Need is Kill is in UK and Irish cinemas from 27 February.
