Knight and Day

Sometimes bad reviews can work in a film's favour. After some disappointing reviews, I went into Tom Cruise's latest, Knight and Day, with very low expectations.Thus, coming out having watched an average but entertaining film, I was this pleasantly surprised and feeling better about it than I would have if I'd gone it expecting more.

Cruise plays super-spy Roy Miller, who may or may not be rogue or mentally disturbed or both. He gets mixed up with ordinary girl June Havens (Cameron Diaz) following a chance meeting at an airport and she gets sucked into his running battle with Federal Agents and international arms dealers. Much predictable action, mayhem and stunning locations follow.

The two stars do a decent job with what their given. Nobody does intense, borderline-nuts quite as well as Cruise (Nicolas Cage is usually too far to the nuts side) and he clearly relishes the chance to play a bit with his Mission Impossible/Top Gun  image. Diaz has less to work with - why scriptwriters create a female character who's into cars and mechanics and still spends half the film screaming and being generally helpless is beyond me - but still does well when called upon her. Cruise bags most of the laughs, but Diaz is very funny when under the influence of truth serum. There's also a strong supporting cast (even if they are mainly playing stereotypes) - Peter Saarsgard hardly stretches himself in his customary is-he-good-is-he-bad role but is still watchable, whilst Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine) excels as the scientist at the centre of things.

What lets this down is the material given to the cast to work with. The Macguffin is ridiculous - a battery about the size of AA that can power a whole city (although this is a long way from being the most ridiculous macguffin of the summer, see The Losers  and Prince of Persia). The main problem is that the film can't decide whether its a straight action-spy film, a parody or a romance and manages none consistently well.  It's best when it's being a parody and there are some good laughs here. As a straight action-spy flick, its star is starting to get a bit too old and the film is over-reliant on dodgy greenscreen and CGi which means that it can't live with the likes of Bourne or modern Bond and feels lacking in punch. As a romance, its ok - but with Cruise and Diaz you could hardly fail, but you could do better than is achieved here. They also cut huge corners in the plot by having different characters drugged at various points and waking up in different locations, which actually works surprisingly well on the whole.

Overall - 6/10 This is not a classic by any means, but as undemanding entertainment it just about passes muster with some good funny bits and passable action.