Director: James Mangold
Screenwriter: Patrick O’Neill
Director of photography: Phedon Papamichael
Production designer: Andrew Menzies
Music: John Powell
Costume designer: Arianne Phillips
Editors: Michael M’Cusker, Quincy Z. Gunderson
Cast: Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Peter Sarsgaard, Jordi Molla, Viola Davis.
(PG-13, 110 minutes)
The Bottom Line
Cheerily old-fashioned, this madcap action caper oozes elegance and style but it is lost in time. Its look-and-feel is that of an early 1980s caper, a glossy vehicle on which gorgeous stars display their style and deliver wisecracks as the plot throws them from one glamorous location to another. It’s a throwback to another time and it’s neither witty nor smart enough to live up to the tradition it is plundering. In 1975 it would have been a hit, right now, it’s an obvious miss.
Main Review
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with “Knight and Day”. Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz made a great team in “Vanilla Sky” (2001). Now they have re-teamed for ‘Knight and Day” in which they play deftly off each other’s stylish skills, and there’s a vein of crisp, comedy banter that keeps the film racing along in a most entertaining fashion – but it’s a fashion that went out of style 20 years ago so why are these megastars wasting their evident talent on this tame, elderly movie? OK, so the action hops across continents faster than even the participants on the TV show “The Amazing Race” and Cruise and Diaz handle bullets, chases and wisecracks with equal skill but none of this is new or exciting. If you had sat down to see this film in 1999, you would have applauded it as a huge international hit.
No wonder that, in 2010, “Knight and Day” has been given a lukewarm reception by American audiences and in other major cities around the world. To my mind, the Problem is CGI-fatigue. The new technology that reinvented the Hollywood action blockbuster in ways that we had never previously seen is no longer so new. The novelty of real actors is computer generated locations has become commonplace in the movie-malls of the world. I’ll bring this train of thought back to “Knight and Day” in a short while, but just look back with me, to how computer generated images (CGI) have transformed the film-making process. Their impact has been enormous, giving directors and designers unlimited freedom to create chases, stage disasters and build extraordinary action sequences in amazing places using computer-generated images.
The process started appearing in the movie-mainstream in the mid 1980s with films like “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”(1988) using a seamless combination of real actors in animated settings. The big commercial breakthrough came in 1993 when Spielberg and Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) made “Jurassic Park”. Then came “Titanic” (1997) and the floodgates opened with “Gladiator” (2000) the film that re-built Rome out of pixels. In swift succession came the “Harry Potter” movies, the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, “The Mummy” series, Christopher Nolan’s “Batman” re-vamp, “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Spiderman” all of them films that have re-defined the movie business. The result is that audiences have grown accustomed to seeing bigger, better and more amazing effects, and they now take it for granted.
Some major directors, like James Cameron with “Avatar” and Christopher Nolan with “Inception”, can meet their audience’s high expectations. Other directors are not quite so original in their thinking. That’s where the problem lies. The Jerry Bruckheimer school of movie making consists of a slick collation of grand locations, relentless chases and huge explosions created or eluded by good looking, A-list actors, who sling racy dialogue and wisecracks around as if they were hand-grenades. These films fall back on a familiar formula, but they are dressed up with star-power and grand CGI effects. They still assume that audiences, who were dazzled by CGI effects in 2000, are still ready to be wowed by the same old stuff in 2010 and that is a wrong assumption
Look back over this year’s box-office list, however, shows that these films are losing their popularity with smart, progressive audiences, who are getting tired of re-treads. “Knight and Day” is one such re-tread that delivers a glossy, glamorous, racy ride that is fun to watch but it is awfully familiar. It’s a bit like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in “Mr. And Mrs. Smith”, with a dash “Mission Impossible” tossed in for good measure and it sports the smart, witty dialogue we are used to hearing in 007 movies.
June (Cameron Diaz) is a woman in a hurry. She has to catch a plane that will take her to her sister’s wedding. Despite the rush she finds enough time to spend a passing moment with a handsome guy Roy Miller (Tom Cruise). Once in flight, however, things rapidly change as a lot of corpses appear and it seems as if Miller was the killer. Before June can even process that, the plane takes a nose-dive and as the couple run for their lives from the plane-wreck, she realises that their meeting was not random. Miller is not who she thinks he is, but she realises that, for some reason, he needs her.
Looking for logic or originality in this film is like looking for nutritional value in a ball of candy-floss – it just ain’t there. The movie exists solely to showcase how quickly two sexy, good-looking stars can whirl around the world to do mad things, like running with the bulls in Pamplona - on a motorcycle. The banter is crisp; the “red herring” clues are more like crimson whales, but a skilled cast of supporting actors – Pete Saarsgaard, the ever-wonderful Viola Davis, Jordi Molla and others – add style to the film. Sadly, it cannot shake the stale smell of mediocrity.
It is no secret that the script for “Knight and Day” was banging around Hollywood for two years before someone decided to make it. Many big-name stars were attached to the film, but one after another they were either fired or they walked away. Gerard Butler and Eva Mendes were once in line for the lead roles, but the film drifted about in limbo for 18 months before the executives decided that the double-whammy star-power of Cruise and Diaz, would make it work. It was good gamble, but it didn’t work. In a movie environment in which Zach Efron is the hottest star; in which the “Twilight” saga is topping the box-office, and the final “Harry Potter” is already being called the movie of 2010, Tom Cruise who is now 48 and Cameron Diaz is 38 are “mom-and-pop” figures to the kids at whom “Knight and Day” is aimed. That’s why the film did mediocre to poor business in the US. Despite a large number of positive reviews, the public stayed away because audiences could tell, just from seeing the trailer that they had seen it all before - and they were right! While the fun and fabulous locations may keep you amused, but the film’s appeal fades fast.
Other Views
“San Francisco Chronicle”, Mick LaSalle
In the end, Knight and Day isn’t really about much of anything besides having a good time or perhaps the meaning of Tom Cruise-ness in the universe.
“Washington Post”, Michael O’Sullivan
It’s both straight-faced spy film and sly spy spoof. That’s a difficult balancing act, but director James Mangold gets it exactly right.
“Boston Globe”, Ty Burr
The movie’s a piece of high-octane summer piffle: stylish, funny, brainless without being too obnoxious about it, and Cruise is its manic animating principle.
“Variety”, Justin Chang
A high-energy, low-impact caper-comedy that labors to bring a measure of wit, romance and glamour to an overworked spy-thriller template.