Tom Cruise has spent so long playing action heroes that it's jarring to see him play a coward. In Doug Liman's Edge of Tomorrow, Cruise plays William Cage, a recruiter for the United Defense Force who has convinced millions of young men and women to sign up to battle an alien race known as the Mimics. When the leader of the UDF (Brendan Gleeson) presents Cage with the chance to report from the front lines of the final assault on the Mimics' stronghold in Northern France, he declines, saying that he became a recruiter specifically to avoid combat. His refusal isn't accepted, so he is knocked unconscious. Upon waking, he discovers that he has been sent to a training camp where his commanding officer (Bill Paxton) has been told that Cage is a deserter. Against his protests, he is strapped into a mech suit so that he, along with thousands of others, can fight the Mimics on the beaches. Unable to even turn off the safety on his weapon, Cage is killed within minutes. Then, he wakes up back on the training camp, meets his commanding officer again, and realises that his whole day has been reset.