Knight and Day

"No one follows us or I'll kill myself and then her"

I'm fully aware that I'm in some kind of critical minority here, but I think Tom Cruise is fantastic. I've said it before but in terms of iconic stardom he's the modern day equivalent of John Wayne, playing variations on a strictly defined screen persona and mining the same vein over and over to find nuance in his performance. Here he gently pokes fun at his action persona, a slightly campy take that says more about his confidence as an actor than any amount of 'tell-all' interviews. He plays a cheerfully paranoid superspy with an Ace Rimmer-ish skill for charming people; the sort of role that Cruise can make effortlessly entertaining.

Everything in Knight and Day is positioned from the point of view of June Havens (Cameron Diaz), and the best aspect of the script is the fact that she ducks in and out of this bigger story and the ways she gets re-introduced to it at each point. But, with this in mind, this means that it feels wrong when the film suddenly switches to Cruise's point of view towards the end. It breaks the bubble.

I won't bother getting into the plot, it's pretty standard stuff and plays a Hitchcock-lite game of is-he-or-isn't-he-crazy? It's basically The Tourist, but more tonally focused and aware of what it's doing (which is ironic because Cruise was meant to be in The Tourist but ultimately pulled out before it went into production). In the '90s Knight and Day would've been considered new, sharp and dynamic (ala True Lies) but now, well, it's fun enough, but it also isn't anything special. Apparently it was considered a box office bomb in the U.S. despite the fact that it made a big profit in the international market. All I can say is, just check your expectations at the door and you'll enjoy it.

DIRECTOR: James Mangold
WRITER/SOURCE: Patrick O'Neill
KEY ACTORS: Cameron Diaz, Tom Cruise, Paul Dano, Peter Sarsgaard, Maggie Grace, Mark Blucas, Viola Davis,

RELATED TEXTS:
- See also The Tourist, with which this film shares more than a few similarities (including a poor reception from the critics).
- The corrupt-CIA agent plot is just about in every modern American action thriller in this increasingly cynical post-9/11 world, other examples include: The Expendables, Red, The A-Team and The Losers.
- Tom Cruise action films... Mission: Impossible, Mission: Impossible II, Mission: Impossible III, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, Top Gun, Minority Report, War of the Worlds and Collateral.
- Cruise and Diaz previously starred together in Vanilla Sky.