“Uh, I was teaching third grade last week.” Oh, good, then you’ll not need any training for this mission.
The Tomorrow War (2021) follows the travails of Dan Forester, former Army Special Forces member, husband, father, teacher – and draftee for a war happening thirty years in the future. A wormhole has been opened by the future humanity, a wormhole that permits limited time travel, as our descendants find themselves in a sudden death struggle with … well, did you ever see Alien (1979)? Yeah, basically mouths on wheels. With the addition of limbs that spit deadly darts, and absurdly reminded me of Pierson’s Puppeteers.
Present day draftees serve seven day terms, returning to present day Earth at the end of those seven days – if the monitors on their arms indicate they’re still living. Forester’s group is scheduled for a couple of weeks of training, and then the jump, but they get virtually no training as an emergency in the future calls them to early duty.
Or an early death. Does that make sense in the future? In any case, someone with a grudge against Miami Beach must have made this movie, because the latest group of draftees are dropped – literally – into a Miami Beach that’s a flaming wreck.
And still contains the seeds of an effective defense.
And who is waiting for Forester? Who is leading the research on the big, bad guys?
Who still loves Daddy?
As far as it goes, it’s a mundane little story – a trifle arbitrary, a bit awkward, and only compelling because of its pell-mell pace and the buddies Forester makes along the way. They have good chemistry.
But, back home with a solution but no delivery system, the future looks dark. Until a series of questions without answers, which I should have liked so much and didn’t, leads to a familial reconcilation. I mean, a ride out to an obscure landing spot.
I mean –
It seemed tacked on, to be honest. We need a happy ending! cried the movie executives, and one was cooked up. Oh, it has its cute aspects, and, technically, I suppose it makes some sense. But at some point, there are enough arbitrary fact drops and plot twists that it no longer feels organic.
If you like action, this is full of it. If you like a protagonist who is full of humility and understated humor, this is also not bad. But if you’re sensitive to manipulation, well, you’ll be manipulated by this one. It’s fun and exciting and you’ll forget about it soon after finishing it.
