“Knight and Day” aspires to the light charm of a romantic action comedy like “Charade” or “Romancing the Stone,” but would come closer if it dialed down the relentless action. The romance part goes without saying after a Meet Cute contrived in an airport, and the comedy seems to generate naturally between Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. But why do so many summer movies find it obligatory to inflict us with CGI overkill? I’d sorta rather see Diaz and Cruise in action scenes on a human scale, rather than have it rubbed in that for long stretches, they’re essentially replaced by animation.
The movie is entertaining, but could have been better. The director is James Mangold, whose previous two films were “Walk the Line” and “3:10 to Yuma.” I have a hunch there was an early draft of Patrick O’Neill’s script that was more in the Cary Grant rom-com tradition and then somebody decided the effects had to be jacked up. From the ads, you could get the notion this is a Michael Bay film.
There’s never been a particularly crisp line between intense, SUPER-AWESOME Tom Cruise and the characters he plays. In Knight and Day, Cruise’s age-old cool curdles into motormouthed neediness. Approaching 50, he suddenly seems desperate for our love. The love Roy Miller’s angling for is that of June Havens, a plucky cipher played by Cameron Diaz who Roy runs into—literally!!—in the Wichita airport. He’s handsome enough, she’s apparently on the prowl, and their flight to Boston is filled with torrid flirting and enemy agents. One unconvincingly filmed plane crash later, the two are on the run, with the explosions, gunplay, and spycraft provoking an awakening in June’s soul. The plot, such as it is, revolves around the hunt for a precocious scientist (Paul Dano) who has invented a perpetual-energy battery. In the end, you may wonder if the makers of this hyperactive, joyless thriller didn’t stumble upon a perpetual-energy battery themselves—and not for the good: Knight and Day keeps going, and going, and going.
Verdict: Worth Seeing.
