Review: "The Tomorrow War"

Amazon Prime's Tomorrow War is an uneven amalgam of recent and classic sci-fi films that features a lot of talent actors but sadly misses the mark entirely. Whether it be due to cliches that are borrowed from arguably better sci-fi films that work a lot better or a complete waste of the charm that oozes out of Chris Pratt, the film is a bore and grows increasingly ludicrous by the minute. However, it does deliver on the promise of being your prototypical mindless action romp that you would expect from a summer blockbuster. Amidst a pandemic, these kind of films are harder to come by making Tomorrow War a welcome addition on the Fourth of July weekend to sit comfortably at home and mindlessly drift into this odd world.

The plot follows Dan Forester (Chris Pratt) who is an ex-marine high school biology teacher that feels left behind and has dreams of getting more out of life. He has a loving wife and a genius of a younger daughter but everything gets flipped on it's head when an armada of balaclava wearing soldiers collapse on to the field of a soccer game warning the public that in thirty years aliens will wipe out mankind and that we are our last hope of survival. Dan, gets drafted to jump to the future in an attempt to make a difference.

While the plot isn't anything new, nor are any of the tropes of the main character being "special" although he doesn't do anything to be special aside from being a yes man more often then not. Zach Dean's screenplay continues to fall apart on itself by the minute and the cliches reign in faster then the bullets being fired at the baddies. The threat in the film is incredibly similar to that of the villains from Edge of Tomorrow. Maybe that film was the prequel to this and we were never told that, who knows. Even more egregious is the fact that largely most of the action scenes are void of any kind of consequence, we are never truly afraid for the characters due to the time travel aspect that we are told about in every scene. The "jump" process that we are shown plays out like how we would expect The Rapture to look like, but instead of being taken to Heaven the characters are instead dropped off into Hell.

The biggest shame of the film is using an actor of the talents of Chris Pratt who has up to this point always played parts that are very likable and ooze charisma and yet his Dan Forester is void of any personality in favor of being a vanilla run of the mill action hero. We are meant to believe that he is supposed to be special but the true hero is largely his co-star, Yvonne Strahovski's character who is the emotional core of the film. Aside from wasting Pratt's talent, J.K. Simmons is another incredible talent that is pushed to the sideline as soon as the viewer is introduced to him as the estranged father of Dan.

While the film is supposed to be a summer action blockbuster, again it succeeds at doing so but the fumbled plot makes it increasingly difficult to care for it during the two hour runtime. Pratt's talent is largely wasted and his character has some unresolved psychological damage to his relationship to his father, which is a usual trope within action films of this type along with his heroic need to make for a better future for his daughter. The Tomorrow War also pushes science to the forefront explaining ad nauseam that it frequently provides a solution to any problem we are faced with. The latter half of the film even roughly touches on global warming issues facing our planet. At the core, the film tries to touch on a lot of themes and does not give any time for any of these issues to breath, nor does it give the viewer time to breath. It is a mess, but if you are looking for some mindless action over the fourth July weekend then this film has that for you.