Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

Dang… where has the love my main man Tom Cruise disappeared to? Jump on one couch too many and get branded a certifiable lunatic and now folks don’t want to see your movies en masse anymore. Twenty years ago I was sitting in a theater watching one of the worst movies ever made in ‘Cocktail’ and that theater was filled to the brim. Yesterday I’m watching a movie that’s actually pretty damned entertaining, if not about twenty minutes too long in ‘Knight and Day’, and that theater was so empty that I could’ve brought everybody there lunch after the credits rolled, and I’m broke. Oh well, waddayagonnado?

On a related side note, no sooner than I get home after watching ‘Knight and Day’ was HBO showing a behind the scenes ‘Making of…’ special of this movie. I mention this because one of the producers of this movie, Cathy Konrad, made the statement in regards to her stars Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz that ‘Chemistry is something you just can’t cook up in a lab.’ Actually, Cathy, you can. That’s why it’s called chemistry, but I feel what you were trying to say.

Back to the movie itself, June (Diaz), is a young lady who restores classic American Muscle Cars is in Kansas, and is in a hurry to get home to Boston with some spare parts in tow to make it to her sisters wedding, when she bumps into Roy (Cruise) at the airport. Twice actually. Unfortunately for June the flight back to Boston is overbooked, a situation that apparently Roy has engineered somehow. Imagine Roy’s surprise when June walks on the plane anyway. An overbooked plane that has about eight people on it. Roy, it would seem, is a Super Secret Agent Man and it would also appear that Roy has gone and turned rogue against his agency and these people on this plane are simply on board to bring Roy to justice or kill him or whatever. Easier said than done as we get to witness first hand Roy’s awesome level of badassery, all while June is freshening up in the ladies room.

Next thing you know there’s a bunch of dead people lying around, a plane crash, and Roy telling June that she needs to watch her back while he puts her to sleep. Back in Boston June’s life returns to normal, that is until the cats in the big black SUV’s show up to ask her some questions about Roy. This was not a good move on their part as the majority of them will end up dead as Roy has made it his purpose in life to protect June, in addition to protecting this incredibly important piece of technology on his person and the tech’s young creator (Paul Dano).

Roy claims that his colleague Fitzgerald (Peter Sarsgaard) is the dirty one, Roy’s boss Director George (Viola Davis) insures June that Roy is the one on the wrong side of the law and it’s looking to June that the Director just might be right about Roy, but doggone it… he’s so darn adorable when he’s choking somebody to death. What’s a girl to do? Shootouts, car chases, bull fights and exploding airplanes shall ensue.

One of the things I think I have working in my favor when it comes to watching these movies is that I’m almost completely detached from the Culture of Celebrity. I enjoy actors, singers and athletes and what they do but I could less of a damn about their private lives because, quite honestly, it’s none of my business. So while Tommy Cruise just might be a raving lunatic, the only thing I care about is if his next movie’s going to be worth watching and in my opinion this one is very well worth watching and it would be too bad that someone who likes these kinds of movies would avoid this movie because of the perceived notion that Tom Cruise is two eggs short of a dozen.

James Mangold directs a movie that has more action than you can shake a stick at, with this action being well realized and spectacularly presented, and indeed, his stars do have that ‘chemistry’ that Producer Konrad was talking about as Cruise and Diaz play off each other so well you would think that this was their tenth movie together and not just their second. Observe Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher in ‘What Happens in Vegas’ to get a good feel for what a pair good looking kids who have absolutely no chemistry together looks like.

Of course the story surrounding our stars and their million dollar smiles is ludicrous. It’s an action super spy movie where highly trained people with automatic weapons can’t shoot tall, pretty crystal blue-eyed women standing two feet in front of them, and if the editor wanted to compress the movie a bit, maybe remove some of the explosive bluster, I wouldn’t have been mad at them. You see the thing that works best in this movie is Cruise and Diaz, and while the explosions and fist fights and bull chases are nice and all, this film would’ve been better served to make those two stars with the chemistry earn their money, flash those smiles and spar back and forth with more witty repartee. Just an opinion.

Come on folks, don’t hold Tom Cruise’s insanity against him. At least he hasn’t petitioned the Dianetic powers that be to make ‘Battlefield Earth II’. That’s gotta be worth something.