Cinema Verdict Review: Knight and Day

Knight and Day

OPENING: 06/23/2010

STUDIO: Fox

RUN TIME: 109 Minutes

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
Cruise and Diaz

Opening Statement
After briefly dabbling in the realm of serious-minded war movies with Lions for Lambs and Valkyrie, Tom Cruise returns to his default setting as the cocky, confident action hero in James Mangold’s Knight and Day. Alas, the results are underwhelming.

Facts of the Case
Our protagonist is a woman named June Havens (Cameron Diaz, The Mask). She makes the mistake of getting on the same plane as a guy named Roy Miller (Tom Cruise, The Last Samurai). June takes a bathroom break mid-flight, and when she returns discovers that Roy has killed everyone on the plane (including the pilots). Obviously, she is concerned. Roy insists that there’s an explanation and that she should trust him. So begins an unusual relationship that is by turns tense, playful and curious. Still, with Roy’s sanity in question and both the FBI and the mob trailing our two lovers, it’s uncertain just how long this high-octane romance can last.

The Evidence
Knight and Day is one of those films I’m sort of hard-pressed to say much about. On the one hand, it’s competently made, reasonably well-acted and provides just about what the trailers promise it will provide. On the other hand, there’s very little that’s exceptional or terribly interesting about the movie. It’s one of those films that seem to exist for no other purpose than to adequately fill an empty space in the summer movie season.

Strangely enough, the film is hot on the heels of a string of action movies that place star-crossed lovers in the midst of action-packed situations. We witnessed this scenario in The Bounty Hunter, Date Night and Killers, none of which were particularly well-received by critics. Knight and Day isn’t doing much to change that situation, as it aspires to be a modern-day Charade but lack the stars and writing to achieve that goal.

Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz are both capable of doing good work, but snappy banter isn’t really their cup of tea. They have pleasant chemistry together, but that’s just the problem: it never rises above “pleasant,” never comes close to the sort of delightful sparkle that Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn (or even George Clooney and Renee Zellweger) have with each other. Despite a handful of amusing lines, writer Patrick O’Neill (turning in his first screenplay for a theatrical film) provides both a story and dialogue that remains pedestrian on a fairly consistent basis. The plot is fueled by an unusual device that I forget the name of, but that’s okay because it’s merely a MacGuffin.

Director James Mangold is a talented man whose films include the very fine Cop Land and the superb remake of 3:10 to Yuma, but he feels very much like a hired gun this go-round. Mangold’s never really been faced with tackling the sort of large-scale action scenes called for in this film, and this film demonstrates that he has a long way to go in that department. The scenes are largely unexciting, save for a fairly well-staged sequence in Spain late in the film (even this section suffers from some very unpersuasive CGI).

The film is littered with talented supporting players, but none of them really get much of interest to do. Peter Sarsgaard (An Education) and Viola Davis (Doubt) are completed wasted as FBI agents, Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood) has very little screen time as Cruise’s nerdy sidekick and Jordi Molla (Bad Boys 2) gets even less to do as the intimidating mob boss. Maggie Grace (Lost) is onscreen so briefly that one might easily miss her if they take a bathroom break. The score by John Powell is livelier and more memorable than most of the supporting players, which is a real problem.

Closing Statement
So Knight and Day revs up its engines and hums along steadily for 110 minutes, giving people just what they paid for and not a wee bit more. You could do worse at the movies right now, but that says more about the state of this summer’s popcorn movies than it does about the merits of the lackluster Knight and Day.

The Verdict
5/10

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