Knight and Day – Film Review
- June 25th, 2010
- Posted in Movies . Reviews
- By Seth
- Write comment
TITLE: Knight and Day
STARRING: Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Peter Sarsgaard, Paul Dano, Viola Davis
DIRECTOR: James Mangold
STUDIO: 20th Century Fox
RATING: PG-13
RUN TIME: 110 min
RELEASE DATE: June 23
By Seth Miller
Staff Writer, Part-Time Ninja
In between the amazing Toy Story 3 and the cultural abomination that is killing the soul of the human race known as The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, is the new film starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz Knight and Day. It’s not good or bad, it is really nothing at all.
The plot of this film is not original and does not serve a vital function in this movie. June (Diaz) is a mechanic from Boston who is going home for her sister’s wedding when she runs into Roy (Cruise). Roy is a secret agent who is on the run from his bosses and arms dealers, while protecting a scientist (Dano) and his scientific breakthrough from them. After he meets June, he decides to take her with him to protect her and because he likes her. This is the whole plot; there is no other significant development or original idea through out the rest of the movie.
One of the few things I liked about the movie is Cruise’s performance. He is very entertaining as a spy who comes off as a good guy, but could be a complete psycho who has turned against his government. He pulls this off very well and is very entertaining, for a while. Also, there were some very beautiful locations the filmmakers shot at and they really do a good job of conveying the beauty of the film’s setting.
Image from tbo.com
The problem that holds this film back from being good, or at least is a competent story, and characters that are written at least slightly well. The whole film rests on the talents of Cruise and Diaz. While they try their best with the characters, there is nothing that really distinguishes them or makes them last for two hours. It does not matter how talented how the actors are; if there is very little for the actors to work with, the characters will get boring and predictable. Which is exactly what happened in this movie. This ties into the fact that there is not a competent story attached to this movie, just an outline that the actors were forced to carry as best they could.
A film like this could at least entertain the audience by using very exciting action scenes that could make up for a crappy story; but the film screws this up too. There are two good action scenes in this entire film: the first is in the beginning of the movie on an airplane and the last one is towards the end of the movie. In between these two are some dumb chases and fight sequences that have been seen in a number of other movies.
There is nothing totally bad about Knight and Day, because there is really nothing to it. It relies on its stars to carry this movie all on their own, which is impossible. This movie desperately needed a decent story and some great action to keep it entertaining and it did not have either. The result is movie that is entertaining for twenty minutes and dull for the rest of the time.
RATING: 3/10
I think you should lose your job. Being a critic doesn’t mean just insulting movies my boy. The story was actually about them two falling in love. Everything else was just the backdrop too that storyline. Albeit they did throw in a lot of action sequences, I rather enjoyed them quite immensely. I believe that was the point. A love story that outrageous of a spy falling in love on the job and making it work at all costs was really entertaining. I have to give it to Cruise and Diaz, they pulled it off where most other actors would have failed.