I appreciated that at the height of the Thank you For your Service propaganda in the US, Cruise played a character that was honest about wanting to avoid combat.

What made it a better Tom Cruise movie was that he wasn't Tom Cruise right away.

In his movies he is always the best soldier and never makes a mistake, in this he started off unlikable and had to become the best, one mistake at a time.

Agree. It bears all the usual blockbuster adornments of what usually turns out to be a good guys win linear snooze fest and yet defies the expectation. I prefer Cruise in atypical roles, e.g. Tropic Thunder.

Yeah, I ignored it when it release, assuming it was just some stupid blockbuster action movie. I watched it recently when Christopher Bingham talked about it in his time loop series. I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

The first half of the movie is good but in the second half it just becomes a generic action movie and it sucks.