Light-hearted escapist fare from the director of 3:10 To Yuma.
Every American summer a movie like Knight and Day appears. In between the massive blockbusters is the action comedy, movies like Mr. & Mrs. Smith and to a lesser extent, After The Sunset. They are characterised by exotic locales and outrageous action sequences, in other words perfect summer fare. Only down here it’s not Summer and seeing sun-drenched bodies makes me very jealous…
On to the movie itself though. As you might have seen from the marketing, Tom Cruise has taken a break from Scientology to lead this pic with Cameron Diaz playing the love interest. And for all the flak he gets, he’s still a good actor. Sadly these days not many can see past his offensive Scientology antics and so avoid his movies like the plague. Indeed Knight and Day had the weakest US opening out of any Tom Cruise action film in 20 years. Too bad, because this is genuinely entertaining, if a little silly.
Cruise plays Roy Miller, a government agent gone rogue who by happenstance ends up on the same flight as June Miller (Diaz), a classic car restorer making her way back to Boston. They have a couple of meet-cute’s and before you know it June is prepping herself in the airplane toilet for a possible entry into the mile high club. The only problem is the occupational hazard of Roy being a rogue agent. June comes out to find everyone dead and Roy calmly explaining how he will be landing the plane.
The movie continues in this fashion, with increasingly preposterous set-pieces taking place in locales so gorgeous you start to salivate. The plot isn’t really important here. There’s a great MacGuffin to keep everything moving, and maintain at least some sense of story while the action starts to hit Michael Bay proportions.
Paul Dano and Peter Sarsgaard have small roles, as the keeper of the MacGuffin and the head of the Roy Miller man hunt respectively. Both of these guys would feature on my list of favourite actors so it was a pleasure to see them in this.
If you like the idea of an entertaining jaunt through some of Europe’s most beautiful countries then you’ll get your money’s worth out of Knight and Day. Don’t pay attention to the plot, as it will just do your head in. Sit back and enjoy the ride.
3 1/2 Stars
Andrew Cozens