With star power like Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz you expect more than you get with Knight and Day. Not that it is a bad movie; it just doesn’t really ever take off. Cruise plays an unnamed agency’s secret agent Roy Miller who’s supposedly “gone rogue”. He meets up with Diaz’s June Havens in an airport and the two of them end up on the same plane filled with assassins out for his head, so of course he has to kill everyone including the pilots while she is in the lavatory and then crash lands the plane.

From there on the movie plays out like a rom com Bourne Identity. Roy is actually being set up by another agent, but you can’t tell if he is or isn’t the bad guy. And poor innocent June is put in the middle of the intrigue by virtue of being on the plane and flirting with him. Before you know it, she is in the crossfire during gun battles, or being chased by really bad people on motorcycles and trains, or speeding the wrong way down the freeway. And frequently she is being fed something that knocks her unconscious only to awaken in a new location. Of course she falls for Roy and he for her. But this is another of the problems with the movie – there just is no chemistry between these two. They might as well be BFFs.

The plot revolves around a super battery that has unlimited power. Roy has run off with it and other people want it for a variety of nefarious reasons. The story takes you around the world hopping from Wichita to Boston to Roy’s private desert island in the Azores to Salzburg to Seville. The scenery is lovely and the action scenes well done, but the script is pure formula and the direction never rises above it.

Knight and Day would probably make a good date movie, but beyond that, I’d wait for the DVD or HBO. Cruise and Diaz have a lot better films in them.

2 thoughts on “Knight and Day”
  1. I was just debating with folks this morning about whether I should put this movie at the top of my ‘must see’ list. Apparently, it’s gotten a couple of high-profile raves (though I’m always skeptical when it feels like I’ve seen all the ‘highlights’ in the previews). It kinda looks like a bizarre cross between “Jerry Maguire” and “Mission Impossible”. But they were both good movies. So I may have to check it out…

  2. Since the only other movie opening wide this weekend is Adam Sandler’s Grown Ups, this is probably the best choice. As I said, it isn’t a bad movie, just could have been a lot better. And you have seen all the highlights in the previews.

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