All You Need is Kill Review
Maybe you’ve heard this one before: a soldier gets stuck in a time loop because of an alien invasion and has to find a way to stop the threat as well as the loop. Its slogan: “live, die, repeat,” signifying the endless attempts at escape despite their failures. What comes to your mind? Without a doubt, the thought of Edge of Tomorrow, the highly praised film from Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie, must’ve come up.
Many don’t know, however, that it’s an adaptation of Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s novel, All You Need Is Kill. Fortunately, the Japanese sci-fi light novel makes a comeback under Kenichiro Akimoto’s direction as an anime film, which is a visually captivating adaptation of its own.
All You Need is Kill follows a young excavator, Rita, whose job is to help clear out the infestation left by a massive alien structure called Darol. However, when Rita gets attacked and infected by Darol’s spawn, she’s forced to relive the same day repeatedly until she comes across a shy engineer called Keiji. Together, the two must find a way to break their loops before Darol assimilates both of them.
Despite most audiences being familiar with this concept thanks to McQ’s film, this adaptation takes a unique approach to the original novel. For one, even though it follows the same story that Sakurazaka created, the biggest difference is switching up the roles of the two leads. Instead of Keiji being the character the viewer follows, we’re shown Rita’s perspective and what she’s had to go through. She’s been handed a bad card in her youth: she had an abusive childhood, which made her feel alone and ultimately self-centered. As a way to give her that chance to break through, her time with Keiji slowly opens that door.
Even though we don’t get much of them together until midway through the film (which is about forty minutes in), Rita and Keiji’s chemistry shares some similarity with Cruise’s Cage and Emily Blunt’s Rita. Both duos are built on determined curiosity, between the threat and eventually with each other, and both face similar narrative directions. However, the thing with Rita and Keiji in this film is that their shared emotional and psychological journeys are emphasized more here than in the original novel. While they’re both locked into this loop together, they’re given time to slowly understand what drives them to commit to their need for a “better tomorrow.”
However, due to the repetitive nature of All You Need is Kill, similarly to how McQ and Doug Liman put their film together, it results in these moments feeling short-lived in what they could accomplish. The first act repeats a structure some may be too familiar with as Rita’s initial attempts at escaping, from isolating herself to her own suicide. When the film eventually introduces Keiji, he seems like an optimistic force for good despite needing to learn the ropes like Rita does, but it also wants to do more. This is especially so when the duo finally bring the fight to Darol’s spawn, whose flora-based designs add a colorful splotch to the film.
What All You Need is Kill does successfully are those slick, fast-paced action sequences courtesy of Studio 4°C. Each set piece involving Rita, Keiiji, and the monsters (the OG “Mimics”) confidently increases in scale as bigger waves of creatures and giant Alien-esque cargo bots and drones fight against each other. However, even outside of these action scenes, the hand-drawn animation and the retro-futuristic palette truly indulges you into this colorful, mystifying environment that seems fitting for an unusual alien threat. Still, the film tries to give you that rush of adrenaline in the second act, only for the transition point between that and the climax to slow down.
That thematic messaging of perseverance and sacrifice for a better future is still laid out, but the narrative flow to get to the next destination makes the audience lose a bit of that focus. There’s a lot of explanations to fill the void as to how Darol works and its parasitic bonds to Rita and Keiji, which go into the third act too. Even though these moments try to introduce new characters at the last minute before the formal confrontation, it may feel forced to try and push these comprehensive reviews onto the viewer. However, these themes are somewhat prominent enough in Rita and Keiji’s final bout that hold some emotional impact.
Although some of its character-centric elements could be further fleshed out, Kenichiro Akimoto does a satisfactory job in bringing Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s original story into the present with this film. This adaptation of All You Need is Kill is an action-packed and aesthetically pleasing take with a modest, if somewhat open, exploration of how change can be achieved.
All You Need is Kill releases in theaters on January 16.
Rating: ★★★½
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Christopher Gallardo is a freelance entertainment writer and critic. While not running The Reel Roller, Chris can be found writing reviews and breakdowns on all things films and TV. Outside of entertainment writing, he’s currently taking classes for a Bachelor’s of Science with a minor in Digital Media & Journalism. Plus, he loves Percy Jackson, animated films and shows, and Fallout! Follow Christopher on Instagram & X.