There was a time when star could open a movie on their name alone and to mix and match a couple of famous celebrities on a marquee would ensure that people would flock to a film in droves. Those days are all but gone these days as it’s usually the IP that rules the cinemas these days – but every now and then Hollywood remembers the old days and tries to kick-start that trend once again. A perfect example of this is James Mangold’s 2010s action comedy, Knight And Day, which attempted the tried and true superstar route by pairing Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz in an attempt to revive a forgotten trope.
Best described as Mission: Impossible reworked as a rom-com, Knight And Day attempts the same kind of glib, relationship based, spy-jinks that signified that other, post-2000s comedy actioner, Mr & Mrs Smith and mixed plenty of affable farce with outrageous action sequences. Could the team of Cruise, Diaz and Marigold bring back the forgotten art of star power, or has it truly had its (knight &) day?
Car restorer June Havens is about to hop aboard a flight back to Boston after picking up auto parts in Wichita when she bumps into the mysterious, but charming Roy Miller. The two seem to hit it off royally but after a booking snafu, June is first seemingly bumped from the flight, only to be suddenly put back on to fund that the plane is next to empty. Unbeknownst to her (although she finds out soon enough), it turns out that Roy is actually a rogue CIA agent who has apparently stolen the prototype of a perpetual energy battery known as the zephyr and everyone else on the plane, including the pilots, are planted assassins who try to kill him. After crashing the plane and escaping with June, Roy drugs her after giving her very specific survival instructions, but after waking up back in her hone in Boston, she promptly forgets them when the CIA come knocking and before you know it she soon finds herself in yet another predicament that once again resolved when Roy appears out of nowhere and kills everybody.
However, it’s here that June finds herself in some sort of conundrum. Between all the shootings and alarming amount of druggings that Roy is exposing her to, it seems that he genuinely cares about her and wants to keep her safe as he tries to locate and protect the childlike inventor of the zephyr, Simon Fleck while fighting of a corrupt element of the CIA and the goons of a Spanish arms dealers. However, there’s an alternate explanation that hints at something way more sinister and it involves Roy going rogue after some sort of breakdown that’s made the super spy horribly paranoid against his own people.
Caught in the middle while cars flip, guns blaze and various things explode at a moment’s notice, can June figure out just exactly what’s going on before her luck (and Roy’s protection) runs out?
Despite its very best efforts to keep us on our toes, Knight And Day proves to be exactly what you’d expect a star powered action comedy made in 2010 to play like. We have a zig zaggy plot centred round a world changing maguffin that centres on Cruise dipping into the comedic reaches of the more manic parts of his personality usually reserved for Oprah Winfey’s couch. To meet this cartoonishly positive super spy, Diaz takes her own, dizzy blonde routine and merges it with as much essence of Sandra Bullock that she humanly can in order to be our surrogate through this wacky comedy that indulges heavily on violent farce and CGI setpieces. As action comedies go, it’s pretty fine, although considering that Cruise doesn’t enter the realms of full comedy that often, it’s a shame that Mangold isn’t in the mood to mix things up.
In fact, there’s a far more interesting movie lurking right under everyone’s nose that not only would have given Knight And Day more of an edge, but also could have given Tom a bit more to play with than a peppy CIA agent. In an attempt to smear Roy for going off the reservation, the suits suggest that he’s actually had something of a mental breakdown and is imagining this vast conspiracy all around him – but rather than it being a rather conventional red herring, what if the film was about a CIA agent who really had suffered a psychotic episode and the woman caught up within it had to talk him down? Maybe that would have been much harder to market, but at least it would have been different – in comparison, while Knight And Day as it exists now is respectfully solid, it’s also almost frustratingly safe and remains curiously devoid of danger and tension no matter how outlandish the action sequences get. This also could be that the film was made during the time when Cruise wasn’t worryingly adamant that every Mission: Impossible movie didn’t require that he try to sacrifice himself to the movie gods at least five times a film, and it’s actually quite strange watching him spend so much time writhing in front of a greenscreen rather than above a thousand foot drop.
Still, despite the fact that at no point do you think that either Cruise or Diaz will get a scratch on their pretty little heads, the action beats are quite inventive. A brawl on a plane involves Roy wiping out an entire clutch of agents while June remains clueless in the bathroom; later an out of control car chase sees our hero trading bullets with enemies while clinging to the bonnet of his vehicle and a climatic bike chase gets a dash of Spanish flavour as they weave in and out of stampeding bulls. Through it all, both leads keep their megawatt smiles on standby, ready to flash those pearly whites whenever they need to charm both each other and us, but aside from the exertion both have obviously put in running from explosions, there’s the feeling that both could do this shtick in their sleep.
As per usual, the supporting cast do what they need to with Viola Davis, Paul Dano and Peter Sarsgaad all performing their various roles in the shadow of their co-stars and Mangold seems to be enjoying himself with a gargantuan action blockbuster after the weightier fare of Girl Interrupted and Walk The Line. However, for all of its energy, Knight And Day also unwittingly reveals maybe why the era of star power came to an end, because it truly does feel that anyone could have starred in this quite frankly and it still would have been exactly the same. In fact, the leads are playing to type so much, you might as well have named them Tom and Cameron and be done with it.
While hardly a groundbreaking action/comedy for the ages, Cruise and Diaz’s vast expanse of charisma still manages to count for something and this, fused with Mangold’s lively direction, means that Knight And Day is still a fun night out. But along with the missed chance of having Cruise send up his Ethan Hunt persona in more extreme fashion, chances are you’ve spied a dozen movies like this already…
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