Movie Review: Knight and Day

Went off to see Tom Cruise’s latest movie where he looked to be having oodles of fun acting like unhinged loon he has come to be known as over the past few years. In the trailers we actually hear him say “I’ll kill myself then her!” and that line alone made me want to watch his latest production. I was absolutely certain that one line told us everything we needed to know about the movie, a zany action-packed shoot‘em up with Tom Cruise playing the screwball agent who falls in love with a dame who was unlucky enough to get caught up in his mess. Sadly, the craziness didn’t live up to my high expectations. The writing on the other hand actually exceeded the low expectations I had for it.

The movie starts off surprisingly quiet and much more evenly paced than I thought it would. Cameron Diaz bumps into Tom Cruise and through a misunderstanding on his pursuers’ part, she gets tangled up in this elaborate attempt on Cruise’s life and thus begins their involvement with one another.

Like I said, the craziness was much more modest than the trailers would have you believe but in spite of that the movie still had some pretty crazy stunts. I mean we see him dropping down onto cars, crash landing a plane, flipping vehicles over with bulls and guns and running around on rooftops but it turns out those scenes were taken out of context. The scenes that led up to and followed after them were of a much more subdued and serious nature though they still had a touch of absurdity in them. To be more specific, the scenes would have been totally dead serious if Cruise actually treated the events with any sense of urgency. But then again I’m chalking those unperturbed reactions of his were a result of his character’s life as a secret agent. Seriously, there’s a surprising amount depth in his character.

My biggest complaint for this movie is that the title didn’t really have much relevance to the actual plot and that it could have easily been “Miller and Day”, “Roy and Day” or “Spy and Day” and those would have actually had been more relevant. Then there’s the fastforwards between changing locations and the abundant use of the Noodle Incident trope to skip over some potentially interesting scenes. Sure, they used it cleverly enough for jokes and call backs but it felt a little more than lazy after the first time. I should also add that the Cruise’s character really seems to be the only character with a fleshed out personality here since I wouldn’t really say that there was very much done with Diaz’s June.

All in all, I found the movie to be good, nice even. However, it spread itself a little too thinly and didn’t stick with any one strong point. Humor, action and most characters feel almost half-assed at points and the movie could have been much more memorable if they prioritized any one of those things a bit more. One thing’s for certain though, if you’re going in there for Cruise then you won’t be disappointed. Unless you’re expecting him to go full loon that is. I’d sure like to see a movie about a loon sometime soon.