It's clear as...Knight?

Knight and Day – James Mangold

Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz join forces again to bring a new film which will make you laugh and cry, but not in a good way. Cruise known for having a career of ups and downs, an up being a very funny turn in Tropic Thunder and the wondrous acting in Rain Man whilst the downs would be the career choices in-between those two films. And now the films after Tropic Thunder again seem to fall short of portraying the sometimes decent actor in a good light. Let me make this clear from the get go, Knight and Day is a really bad film, so bad that i thought it would be a step up from Killers, the Ashton Kutcher, Katherine Heigl picture which failed in both humour and action. Knight and Day has the same problems, lack of chemistry, lack of storyline, lack of acting, lack of enjoyment. I thought having A game actors in the mix would at least push it above the standard set by Kutcher and co, but it just shows that the teams behind both thought it would be a great idea to drop a non-action action film into the array of films this year. Did they look around the market in how an action film can be made?

Surely not! The development process was clearly tampered with, by having people leave the project, call it a failure and have many different script writers; it feels convoluted and detached from what it should have been. It seems many cooks do spoil the broth, but it’s a shame as the broth could have tasted nice. A spy on the run, Roy Miller, played by Tom Cruise, accidently bumps into June Havens, played by Cameron Diaz at an airport and uses her to carry over an important item to the next destination. The plane itself holds secret agents who attack Miller and Havens are then taken by Miller to make sure of her safety. She is now involved in whatever is going on with Miller as more people come out of the dark to try to kill him, it seems as though the FBI are also after him too. It does involve an invention which is the first battery that can never run out, invented by the awesomely hairy Paul Dano (Yes Mother Fucking Paul Dano!). Miller and co are being tracked by an agent, played by Peter Saarsgaard who was clearly blinded by the amount of money given to him for the role. It basically a chase for the group to get the battery into the right hands after Miller stole it from the grip of the wrong people. It has a couple of twists but its obvious what happens.

There have been so many good action films this year, so don’t waste your time and money on this film, just wait until it appears on TV and casually watch it on a Saturday night.

3/10

Simon Childs