Director James Mangold has the wonderful ability to make great movies from all sorts of diverse genres. His credits include Cop Land, Girl, Interrupted, Kate & Leopold, Identity, Walk The Line and 3:10 To Yuma. Although he has done both action and romance movies before, he has never mixed the two until now. And considering how many faults the story for Knight And Day has, he sure makes it work well.
June Havens (Cameron Diaz, Charlie’s Angels) is on her way to home to Boston when she literally bumps into the charming man of her dreams Roy Miller (Tom Cruise, Mission: Impossible). Sparks begin to fly while the two make in-flight small talk, and just after June takes the initiative by kissing him, she learns the truth about Roy – he is a special agent wanted for stealing new technology, which he, of course, claims to be a set-up.
Before long, June becomes caught up in Roy’s cat and mouse game with a sort of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” dichotomy. She doesn’t feel safe with Roy – mainly because he seems partially insane – yet she doesn’t quite trust the other agents that are after him. No matter what she does, June just can’t get away from either of them.
Knight And Day is not the type of movie that you see for its story. Lets be frank. This story is pretty bad and it has some troubling pacing issues. The charming characters and fun action make it worth seeing. Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz have great chemistry together (which is odd to say after their Fatal Attraction relationship in Vanilla Sky). Cruise is at the top of his game playing a cocky and arrogant crazy man and Diaz – who has been stuck in this rut for a while now – has never been less annoying on screen.
If you are the type of person who enjoys witty, fun summer blockbusters, then Knight And Day is right up your alley.
Photo credit: 20th Century Fox
