Knight and Day isn’t confusing or boring. It contains some good stunt work and has an occasionally witty line. The problem with Knight and Day is that it’s a dime-a-dozen plot held back by its own lack of imagination.
Roy Miller (Tom Cruise) is a special agent gone rogue. In an effort to flee Wichita, Kansas (trust me, everyone hear has tried this already) he swaps boarding passes with June (Cameron Diaz). The people trying to capture Roy clear June for her flight to Boston anyways, and she is caught in the crossfire that would have been her leisurely flight to Boston. Roy takes it upon himself to keep an eye on June while smuggling a much sought after eternally powered battery.
What sounds like a simple plot isn’t unveiled until two major action scenes into the film. This plot doesn’t reveal itself; it has to be explained. When that explanation comes after tense action, there’s little reason to care while observing the chaos. Roy kills people left and right, and the audience is in the dark over what we should be keeping an eye on or why we should care at all. Some of these scenes do look good. Tom Cruise is adamant about showing his famous facade while doing the stunts. Just like Mission: Impossible III, Tom takes a faithful leap off a building with an uncut perspective. I appreciate this stuntman approach; it aids me to see that a person is on the screen, let alone the star.
Cruise gets every good line, leaving Diaz with little more than chances to repeat the obvious or gasp for air. Both are playing for laughs, but Cruise is more effective. These are two people functioning in the real world. CIA operates are trying to convince June to help bring in Roy with claims that he’s losing his mind—a reasonable explanation for Tom to play Roy as demented. June’s defining trait is that she’s dumb enough to fly into Wichita for pony car exhaust tips. With all the technology on display, I assume the world of Knight and Day has eBay.
The potential for Knight and Day may have been sealed by commercial limitations. Put two bankable stars into a summer movie action-comedy, then promote a promising director (James Mangold) to his biggest project, and you end up face to face with a computer readout of goals. The most likely route to reach these goals is through the PG-13 rating, and that’s the path Knight and Day chooses. From there, things get lazy. The way the script recycles the POV narcoleptic condition to change surroundings gets old fast. The worst offense committed by Knight and Day is a shockingly convenient resolution. I don’t make it a habit to knowingly dish out spoilers, but you’ll feel stupid after seeing how the protagonist lucks-up. Call it Mission: Ridiculous.
For Knight and Day, a negative counteracts each strength. Every good action set piece has its moment of obvious studio composite work; every good line ends up repeated to the point that it loses strength. There’s certainly enough spectacle on hand to hold interest, but not enough to allocate a portion to the memory. With a brain on autopilot, tuned to receive the messages common with the espionage subgenre, the average viewer may have a decent time watching a rather average movie. **
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