As one of the titles vying for this year’s summer blockbuster status, Knight and Day doesn’t totally disappoint when it comes to exhilarating action sequences. But without anything vaguely interesting happening in-between, it soon becomes apparent that this is a Cruise/Diaz star-vehicle that puts too much weight on the reputations of its leads.
The plot is a relatively simple affair with the common twists and turns that are none too original for the genre. Cruise plays the part of rogue secret agent and all round action man, Roy Miller, who plants a valuable ever-lasting battery on the unknowing June (Diaz) so he can pass through airport security.
June falls head-over-heels for the charming spy within 5 minutes of their meeting (she actually comes across as a little desperate) but returns from the onboard bathroom to find an aircraft full of dead baddies before Roy crash lands them into a field.
Ok, so that would be enough to traumatise most people for life, but June seems weirdly unperturbed by the whole ordeal, and after waking up from a drug-induced sleep she pretty much continues life as normal; that is, until Roy comes crashing back into her life to protect her from the mix of spies and villains that think she still possesses the battery.
The rest of the film is a whirlwind of exploding cars, motorcycle jumps and sexually charged banter across half the globe.
The whole affair is obviously light-hearted, and although the comedic elements won’t have you falling out of your seat, it is perfectly watch-able stuff for a lazy afternoon; especially if you can’t really justify a third trip to see Inception.
The two stars have a very decent onscreen chemistry that is somewhat to be expected from such established talents. Diaz is much more natural at being funny (undoubtedly born from her long history of comic roles) and although Cruise excels at playing the handsome hero with a twinkle in the eye, he has always had an undercurrent of seriousness which dampens his full-blown comedic appeal in this film.
It is a shame that Cruise and Diaz couldn’t bring that same electricity they found together in Vanilla Sky, but that was also a highly original film with heaps more time for the character development that allows actors to really find their stride.
The normally excellent Peter Sarsgaard (An Education) is woefully underused, but it actually turns out to be a blessing as he is also totally miscast.
Sarsgaard proved himself to be the master of the troubled soul in films like Garden State and Jarhead. Here he is lost, trying to gain some grip on the nature of his villainous character but instead evoking all the menace of a petulant schoolboy.
To those who measure their cinematic enjoyment by the ‘more bang for your buck’ system, then Knight and Day will undoubtedly be one of their summer highlights.
But with movies like The A-Team and The Expendables arriving soon, the rest of us can save our bucks for a movie that really knows how to go bang.
3 out of 5 stars
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