Country:
USA
Recognizable Faces:
Tom Cruise
Cameron Diaz
Paul Dano
Marc Blucas
Directed By:
James Mangold
Watching movies as a social situation is awesome. It forces you to watch titles a trained interrogation team couldn't make you watch with a pair of pliers and a blow torch. Then I would've missed the very entertaining and incorrectly pegged as romantic comedy, Knight & Day. Now, I would go ahead and compare this movie to Sylvester Stallone's fun and light hearted nostalgic introspection The Expendables, except maybe that Sly's "let's-make-it-fun-like-in-the-eighties again" would be replaced by James Mangold's "Oh-my-God-weren't-we-fucking-stupid-in-the-nineties" vibe. Having suffered a tsunami of bad action movies in my teenage years, I'm very happy somebody dared to revisit the situation with a sense of humor. And I could have missed this if I didn't have to find a "compromise" movie for Josie, the temporary roommate and I.
At first sight, it is a corny romantic comedy June (Diaz) is a dreamer, seeking the proverbial man, who slams into her not once, but twice in Wichita airport. The vision of male beauty (Cruise) vanishes in the plane she manages to miss, but the dream doesn't end that. That would be counting Tom Cruise's wackiness out too easily. And James Mangold's terrific use of it. The man isn't exactly the reincarnation of Stanley Kubrick, but he manages to keep Knight & Day interesting for hundred and nine minutes, running on one single variable. The fact that his main character is too batshit crazy to even act. See, the said vision of male beauty is named Roy Miller, he's a secret agent gone rogue, to expose the fact that it's really one of his colleagues that is (Peter Sarsgaard). They are fighting over the fate of an invention and what does June has to do with this? Absolutely nothing. And that's what's very fucking funny.
Where a 1990's movies would have been dead serious and seen the female lead understand the situation and catch on quick to what she has to do, Cameron Diaz is all over the place, trying hard as hell to run away from Roy, who she believes to be as batshit crazy as the actor camping his role. June is constantly overwhelmed and Roy has such a handle over the situation, it gets really funny to see a trained CIA Agent go out of his way for a girl and keep the viewer wondering whether he's really romantic or if he's just trying to avoid her a painful death. Cruise can't act and put in a very over-the-top movie, where even the serious elements don't make sense, he shines a very bright and strange glow. In other words, he's amazing (I know, it sounds strange).
Knight & Day has some gaping flaws. The best jokes are machine-gunned through the first half of the movie with amazing energy, but it's like the script has been written over the course of a very long day. The second half drags on with action scenes and ultimately labors to bring the first part variables to a closure. Many of those gag-a-minute movies suffer the same problem. They start off burning rubber, only to plummet at a regular rhythm. Nevertheless, James Mangold's strange fruit re-examines the nineties, a time where Hollywood took itself very seriously, yet couldn't step out of the same stupid fucking format. Knight & Day is an almost two hours long inside joke on Hollywood culture, but it's a good one. It's taken from the Hollywood template to blockbuster movie, so it feels a little trite by moments, but it's all good if you don't expect any intellectual motivation from watching this. Just store it in your mind in case you'll have too, one day, to chose a movie that will "please everyone". It's smart, funny and somewhat cathartic, it's just not going to push boundaries of anything. It's a safe joke that James Mangold played to co-directors and producers.
SCORE: 76%
At first sight, it is a corny romantic comedy June (Diaz) is a dreamer, seeking the proverbial man, who slams into her not once, but twice in Wichita airport. The vision of male beauty (Cruise) vanishes in the plane she manages to miss, but the dream doesn't end that. That would be counting Tom Cruise's wackiness out too easily. And James Mangold's terrific use of it. The man isn't exactly the reincarnation of Stanley Kubrick, but he manages to keep Knight & Day interesting for hundred and nine minutes, running on one single variable. The fact that his main character is too batshit crazy to even act. See, the said vision of male beauty is named Roy Miller, he's a secret agent gone rogue, to expose the fact that it's really one of his colleagues that is (Peter Sarsgaard). They are fighting over the fate of an invention and what does June has to do with this? Absolutely nothing. And that's what's very fucking funny.
Where a 1990's movies would have been dead serious and seen the female lead understand the situation and catch on quick to what she has to do, Cameron Diaz is all over the place, trying hard as hell to run away from Roy, who she believes to be as batshit crazy as the actor camping his role. June is constantly overwhelmed and Roy has such a handle over the situation, it gets really funny to see a trained CIA Agent go out of his way for a girl and keep the viewer wondering whether he's really romantic or if he's just trying to avoid her a painful death. Cruise can't act and put in a very over-the-top movie, where even the serious elements don't make sense, he shines a very bright and strange glow. In other words, he's amazing (I know, it sounds strange).
Knight & Day has some gaping flaws. The best jokes are machine-gunned through the first half of the movie with amazing energy, but it's like the script has been written over the course of a very long day. The second half drags on with action scenes and ultimately labors to bring the first part variables to a closure. Many of those gag-a-minute movies suffer the same problem. They start off burning rubber, only to plummet at a regular rhythm. Nevertheless, James Mangold's strange fruit re-examines the nineties, a time where Hollywood took itself very seriously, yet couldn't step out of the same stupid fucking format. Knight & Day is an almost two hours long inside joke on Hollywood culture, but it's a good one. It's taken from the Hollywood template to blockbuster movie, so it feels a little trite by moments, but it's all good if you don't expect any intellectual motivation from watching this. Just store it in your mind in case you'll have too, one day, to chose a movie that will "please everyone". It's smart, funny and somewhat cathartic, it's just not going to push boundaries of anything. It's a safe joke that James Mangold played to co-directors and producers.
SCORE: 76%
