Knight and Day
Tom’s Less than Excellent Adventure
2010-06-23
By Sergio Mims

CAST: Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Viola Davis, Peter Sarsgaard, Paul Dano
WRITTEN BY: Patrick O’Neill
DIRECTED BY: James Mangold
** TWO STARS

Director James Mangold must be one of the most frustratingly inconsistent film directors working today. For every good film he makes, he makes a lousy one to balance it out. For every solid piece of work as his Johnny Cash biopic, Walk The Line, and his previous movie, the superb western, 3:10 To Yuma, there’s the unwatchable and silly 2003 suspense thriller, Identity, and now his new film, the would-be action romance misfire Knight and Day. 

The film has gotten attention because it’s the only big budget, Hollywood major studio film released this summer that is considered a novelty since it’s not a sequel or based on a comic book or some TV show from the past or some easily recognizable prepackaged, pre-sold concept.

Unfortunately that doesn’t save Knight And Day from being a boring, routine, totally clichéd and predictable movie that despite all its chaos and frantic action feels static.T he film goes through the motions with every “unexpected” plot twist, all easily predictable long before they happen. There’s no spark or joy in the film and it’s poorly timed attempts at humor fall flat every time.

So what’s the scenario? Tom Cruise plays a CIA agent on a mission who uses an innocent victim (Diaz) to smuggle a valuable object that everyone is after – what filmmakers call a “McGuffin.” We never know what it is, but it guides the story. Together Cruise and Diaz go on a globetrotting chase from the U.S., to the Caribbean, Salzburg and Seville dodging cliffhanger
predicaments, bullets, explosions, assassins and even hard charging bulls, saving all mankind in the process.  Stop me if you’ve heard this before.

Diaz, whose oddball, off kilter features should never be photographed in close up, does the usual bit that other actresses in the same role in similar films have done. Basically she screams her head off constantly and runs around in circles as bullets whizz by her while Cruise, being the man (and therefore in the film’s view the superior and smarter of the two) treats her as a nuisance or a child.

For his part Cruise, or the umpteenth time, does his usual full bore, manic, intense schtick which gets increasingly tiresome as the film goes on. Neither he nor Diaz are able to find the right playful tone or approach for the film and as a result fail to generate any sparks.

The premise of a mismatched couple on the run from bad guys is a time honored concept from Hitchcock’s “The 39 Steps”or his late “North by Northwest” and countless other pictures. But in Knight and Day, Mangold never puts an unique original spin on the concept or even tries to subvert it creating something new and different. Even worse the numerous action sequences, with their unfortunate over-reliance on unconvincing CGI effects, are surprisingly lackluster.

Aside from being poorly photographed - with Mangold perplexingly always choosing the wrong camera angle for the most impressive stunts – the scenes are confusingly edited as well. It’s a shame that directing good action sequences in movies, which directors used to be the able toss off like second nature, is increasingly becoming more of an lost art.

It’s unfortunate that Knight and Day turned out as badly as it did. With some effort it could have been an entertaining, clever twist on a genre that needs a fresh re-imaging. Instead it falls back on
busted, worn out clichés whose shelf life expired a long time ago.