(Long Island, N.Y.) I believe the phrase “middle of the road” was coined specifically to describe this movie. What movie? Oh, we’re talking about Knight And Day, a new action/comedy film starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. The movie is fine, mainly because that’s all it apparently aspires to be. Not good, not great, and certainly not horrible. Just…”middle of the road.” Do I give a movie points for such an achievement? Just for not being bad? I don’t think so, especially since I already saw the year’s best movie, Toy Story 3, last week. Following in the wake of that masterpiece with a by-the-numbers effort like Knight And Day is like chasing moist, delicious chocolate cake with a shot of cod oil. Well, maybe not THAT bad, but you get my point, don’t you?
Knight And Day is about a secret agent named Roy Miller (Cruise) who, through a wacky twist of fate, keeps bumping into June Havens (Diaz), a normal everyday gal. She (of course) accidentally gets caught up in his shenanigans and soon finds herself mistakenly targeted by the CIA and running all over the globe with the deadly super-spy Miller, who just so happens to be after perpetual energy battery thingy called the Zephyr. But is Miller trying to stop the battery from falling into the wrong hands, or is he a rouge operative out to make a quick buck by selling it into said wrong hands? Who knows, and Diaz might not live long enough to find out. You will, of course, but that’s because movies aren’t real so you’re in no real danger if you go see it (unless you frequent bad neighborhoods). But…should you?
That’s a hard question to answer. I’m trying to be a professional here and not let the
majesty of Toy Story 3 taint my viewpoint, but if a computer-generated cartoon can affect me on such a visual and emotional level, shouldn’t a movie with REAL LIVE people be able to do the same? Should I be sitting in my theater seat witnessing over-the-top CG stunts, completely indifferent, when I was doing almost the same thing last week, but clutching my girlfriend in terror when faced with the possible horrific fate of Woody, Buzz, and the gang? In both cases we know, deep down, that everything’s going to be okay in the end, but the difference is that, in the case of Knight And Day, you just don’t care. That’s how little I found myself invested in the film’s characters. The pace is swift, and it’s never really boring, but nothing touches you, either. You’re not given a real reason to care about Cruise or Diaz, so you never get the sensation of being brought along for the ride…instead, you’re just painfully aware that you’re sitting in a movie theater seat and something icky is making your sneakers stick to the floor. Ewww…
Still, like I said, Knight And Day is briskly-paced. That’s good. And it does have a few good gags that made me chuckle, fight scenes that were well-staged,
a few neat (yet very fake-looking) stunts and, while their characters are as thin as paper, Cruise and Diaz do possess a decent degree of chemistry. But everything that happens is 150% predictable and I’m just getting sick of these cookie-cutter flicks that don’t engage or surprise me on any level. Also, the stigma of Cruise’s couch-hopping rant on Oprah and his infamous anti-psychiatry interviews back in the day are still hanging over him. It’s a shame, because he’s always been a good actor, and he’s still a viable action star since he’s kept himself in great shape, especially considering his age (what? he’s 47?!?). But I can’t watch a movie with Tom in it without picturing the guy bouncing around the Oprah set squealing “I’M IN LOOVE” or claiming that hanging out in a sauna while stuffed full of vitamins will cure your drug addiction. But, much like Mel Gibson and his well-publicized follies a few years ago, you have to separate the man from the actor and judge them on their own merits. That’s only fair.
Cameron Diaz, on the other hand, I’ve never really been a fan of. I just don’t find her to be a very good actress, nor believable at all in action roles. Oh, and she’s downright annoying sometimes, too. But, given the right script, she can do okay, and that’s what she does here; she does okay. But, as I pointed out, she does get on well with Cruise, so their (inevitable as the tide) romance doesn’t seem as forced as one might suspect it would. Almost.
Hopefully I’ll have purged my system of Toy Story 3 within the next week or so and can go back to appreciating completely average movies again. Until then, I’ll have to suffer with the memory of what a truly great film can be and how pitifully few of them are actually made each year. But eventually, I’ll re-settle back into my rut and when that happens, a film like Knight And Day might even seem a pleasurable experience. Until then, it gets 2 stars…but that’s only because I’m in a good mood.
