Film Review with Robert Mann – Knight and Day

7th August 2010

Knight and Day ***

The fourth and final entry into this year’s quartet of male-female action comedies – the others being The Bounty Hunter, Date Night and Killers – Knight and Day is without a doubt the most high profile of the lot, both featuring the biggest stars and carrying the largest production budget. These two things, however, don’t necessarily translate to great word of mouth or impressive box office and the response from the film’s release in the states has been mixed at best, the box office performance best described as okay, at least until its earnings are compared to the production budget it has fallen considerably short of. International box office takings thus far have salvaged the film though and for all the underwhelming word of mouth coming from the states, this is still a film with some quite impressive credentials behind it. Director James Mangold has such an impressive track record that it seems almost surprising that he is involved in this film, his past credits including critically acclaimed films such as 1997’s Cop Land, 2000’s Girl, Interrupted, 2003’s Identity, 2006’s Walk the Line and 2007’s 3:10 to Yuma, even though his 2002 film Kate & Leopold poses a slight blip on an otherwise quite impressive list of credits. This film is also the first time Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz have appeared on screen together since 2002’s Vanilla Sky. Cruise’s involvement, however, does seem to be one of the reasons why the film hasn’t taken off as might have been expected. In recent years his star power has diminished significantly and it was it was an awfully big assumption that he was popular again when there was never any real evidence to support this assessment. Regardless of his popularity, though, his hilarious appearance in 2008’s Tropic Thunder as foul mouthed studio head Les Grossman showed the world that he has a knack for comedy and in Knight and Day he demonstrates this once again, it not quite as successfully.

Normal girl June Havens (Cameron Diaz) has her life turned upside down when she gets mixed up with a super-spy named Roy Miller (Tom Cruise). Their first encounter is on a flight to Boston where June finds herself hiding in the washroom while Miller fights off the crew and passengers – all of whom are assassins – before crash-landing the plane. June then wakes up in her own bed, unharmed and with no idea of how she got there. Heading for a dress fitting for the wedding of her sister Alice (Maggie Grace), she finds herself bundled into an unmarked car by a team of sinister men who seem to be government agents and who are taking their orders from the rather sinister Fitzgerald (Peter Sarsgard) who informs her that Miller has experienced a full on break with reality and gone rogue. That’s when Miller intervenes again, and, despite not being completely sure about whether or not she can trust him, June ends up joining him on a glamorous, globetrotting and awesomely dangerous adventure, where nothing and no one – even the now fugitive couple – are what they seem.

The reason I say that Tom Cruise isn’t as quite as successful in showing off his comic prowess in Knight and Day as he was in Tropic Thunder is that his performance here is too obviously him. As Les Grossman he was virtually unrecognisable, him becoming a character for once rather than playing him, but here he is just the Tom Cruise we all know well. He plays the role of Roy Miller (whose character shares his name with that of the character played by Matt Damon in this year’s Green Zone) essentially like a deranged, comedy version of Ethan Hunt from Mission: Impossible and while he does succeed in being very entertaining and pretty funny at times – the way he plays the role almost seriously at times makes the delivery of his lines seem much funnier than if he was just playing full on crazy, although he does do the crazy and unhinged thing pretty well too – he never quite manages to be completely hilarious like anyone who has seen Tropic Thunder will know he can be. Likewise can be said of Cameron Diaz, who also proves very entertaining but whose character spends too much of the film either shrieking as bullets fly around her or knocked out after being drugged by Miller. So, on their own terms, neither of the film’s stars are at their best but this doesn’t stop them from having an electric chemistry on screen and the film glides on their charisma for much of the duration. Which highlights another problem that prevents the film from being as good as it could be. Despite a great start to the film and plenty of thrilling and some very funny globe-trotting action sequences – fist fights, car chases, shoot outs and a run in with some stampeding bulls are what we get here – the film loses a lot of steam as it progresses. A key reason for this is that the plot, while offering plenty of twists and turns, isn’t all that interesting and it never really feels like all that much is at stake, the writing somewhat lacking in several areas. There is perhaps on overreliance on banter between Cruise and Diaz’s characters at times and, while there is some quite humorous dialogue, the film never manages to be as funny as it could be, the laughs more intermittent than nonstop. Also, while the film delivers on the action side of things (it being great to see Tom Cruise in action mode again), the romance element never really takes off, the result of a lack of character development and scenes that show us exactly how and why the characters grow to be so close. So, overall, Knight and Day is definitely not one of James Mangold’s better pieces of work. Enjoyable but not unmissable, as long as you don’t expect too much and don’t take it seriously, this is a film that you can certainly enjoy but definitely won’t love.

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Review by Robert Mann BA (Hons)

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