Film Reviews

Knight and Day

• Rating:
• Director: James Mangold
• Starring: Cameron Diaz
• Details: US/TBC (TBC)

Despite being a beacon for scorn and ridicule for certain parts of the media, Tom Cruise has more often than not delivered where it counts - on screen. While footage from Jerry Maguire may be more prominent on the Oscar's annual nod to those who have passed on when Cruise finally boards that invisible spaceship in the sky and flies off to a better world, he's really an action star at heart. Oozing charm, energy and charisma here, paired with his Vanilla Sky co-star Cameron Diaz, our leads are easily the best thing about this otherwise choppy, but sometimes enjoyable continental-hopping romp.
Cruise is ousted CIA Agent Roy Miller, who starts following Cameron Diaz's slightly neurotic June Havens in the airport so he can have her smuggle through a seemingly random item that could see him being pinched by the authorities. When she somehow ends up on the same sparsely populated plane as him, a bit of a scrap kicks off between Roy and the other passengers, resulting in the early demise of the latter, and leaving Cruise's mysterious ass-kicker to land the plane. After he does, June is warned that after she goes home some bad dudes masquerading as federal agents will turn up intent on killing/imprisoning her. Whenever they turn up in her life, Roy isn't far behind and vice-versa.
Opening brilliantly, with Cruise utilising his movie star magnetism to play up on the enigmatic nature of his character, Knight and Day has one hokey plot device that continually shoves it off the rails. We see the movie almost entirely from Diaz's point of view, but whenever things get a bit much, Cruise slips her a roofie of some sort that knocks her right out. This feels like cheating the audience and would be pushing it after the second time, but Mangold continually fades out of the action, then back in after it's all over. It's a lazy way of getting characters from one setting to the next, and it becomes teeth-grindingly repetitive after a while.
What Knight and Day does prove, and unequivocally, is that Tom Cruise still has it. He's great here, and seems to be having a lot of fun with a character who does serious things (like killing countless people) but doesn't act in a serious manner. Diaz doesn't have much to do other than look great and freak out a lot, but the twosome bounce off each other delightfully whenever they're on screen together.
It can be a frustrating experience at times (truth serum actually makes an appearance at one point), but Knight and Day is still a solid watch thanks to its two high end leads.

Review by Mike Sheridan