Knight and Day review

James Mangold's "Knight and Day" suffers from one big fat problem; it doesn't know what movie it wants to be. What's worst is when it kind of decides, it's a weaker choice and ends up killing any fun hoped to be had from the film.

Before I jump into this I wanna say that I'm not a bandwagon hater of Cruise. He's more a showman than an actor, but then again most big names are. He gets flack from people saying he plays the same characters and the same people and yet isn't that something most actors and actress end up doing at some point? As great as Sean Penn is he has played watchable scumbags a dozen times with fairly the same look, movements and voice. Samuel L. Jackson is usually playing Samuel L. Jackson in either scream mode or soft spoken, but intelligent mode. Johnny Depp plays the creep or weirdo more than anybody else. And really when's the last time Christopher Walken DIDN'T play himself in a film? Like everyone else Cruise has taken easy street and looked for better things; however I really feel that a heavy percentage of the backlash comes from the 'he's crazy' sector. And yet we all seems to have forgotten drunken Mel Gibson screaming about jews, John Mayer using the term nigger (twice and not in a tolerable way) or Christian Bale tearing a DP a new one for moving a light. The point is leave the bullshit TMZ stuff at the door or just stay at home all together because tabloid B.S. rarely has anything to do with ones final work.

The set up is this, Roy Miller (Cruise) is a spy running from the CIA and a group of Spanish arms dealers. June (Diaz) is his somewhat unwilling accomplice after they meet in the airport and he saves her by landing the plane that he killed everybody on. Don't worry they were all bad guys. The next day June comes face to face with agents telling her the same thing Miller told her they'd tell her right before they take her away and kill her. This leads to some high flying stunts, CGI action sequences and lots of dead people. Normally this description from me would amount to a meh, but something about the first thirty to forty minutes is actually kind of fun. And the biggest reason is because of Cruise and Diaz's chemistry. Their banter can sometimes be eye rolling, but other times quite charming and funny. For example during the big freeway chase/shoot out scene, Cruise's reactions and handling of June is really funny just because of how happy he is to see her. It's one of those stupid juxtapositions that's just goofy enough to work.

On the other end are these pieces of the movie that just feel way too hokey and completely take you out. But there is a straight forward point in the movie where it finally decides what to become. It's comparable to Mel Gibson's "Edge of Darkness" from January. The beginning had stuff I liked and stuff I didn't, but then came a point where I was completely on board and loving every second of it. "Knight and Day" however takes another path and turns what was an up and down movie and just heads straight down by delving further into lame cliches and ridiculous action sequences that kind of work followed by ones that really have no place in this movie.

A great way to fix this all would have been to not aim at being this summer action, comedy; but aim at what it's material probably began as. "Knight and Day" sounds and at times feels like a real throwback to the 60's spy films. Handsome spies and the foolish women that strangely fall in love with them faster then you can say Ian Flemming. Seriously watch some of those movies from back then; it doesn't matter what country made it the chick always ends up lovin' on Mr. Spy within one to two meetings. Had this film tried more to be a romance with action bits things could have worked out. Or at the very least NOT taken itself quite so seriously so when those crazed action sequences arrive you don't feel like they're from another movie.

Furthermore I think director James Mangold ('Walk the Line' and '3:10 to Yuma') could have passed on making this one. While I think he's very skilled and love that he doesn't stick to one genre, this needed a type of style he doesn't have. Mangold is more a person for drama and less for humor or stylized action of this caliber. I think poking around for an action director looking for something with more character and less action, but work really hard on the little there is would have really helped things out. Pierre Morrel, Joe Carnahan, even Edgar Wright or Tony Scott might have turned out a real first class piece of entertainment. Instead a safer and ultimately weaker hand was played.

All that said my first thought on "Knight and Day" was that this wasn't a movie Cruise or Diaz needed to make. The "Romancing the Stone" styled action, romantic comedy is great for performers looking to boost up their viewership and get their name out there some more. James Franco or Colin Farrell would've been pretty damn cool to see as Cruise's charming and collected spy on the run Roy Miller. For an actress this would have been a nice role for someone like... oh hell I'll say it... Kristen Bell, who NEEDS something out of left field to take her out of this shitty, shit, SHIT rom-coms she's doing. However I can understand FOX's thought process on getting big names to sell this movie. I can see them sandwiching the quite impressive throwback poster between "True Lies" and "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" and thinking... we've done it again.

Unfortunately I don't this will get the bucks they might be hoping for. As one critic said, 'if Knight and Day doesn't find it's audience this weekend, then it never will' and that's the truth. As it stands Cruise/Diaz is fighting off an Adam Sandler movie (which I'll be reviewing soon...) and next week will lose to both "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" and M. Night Shyamalan's "The Last Airbender". So any success it's going to have must happen now or it will be forgotten in the pile of junky summer movies out right now. Actually... that's where this one belongs anyway.