If you are the type of film goer who enjoys well-choreographed action sequences with explosions capable of blowing holes in the plot big enough for a jetliner to fly through, then have I got a movie for you! Though I have no evidence to back up my claim, I believe that the original title of this film was Dog And Turd. All kidding aside, Knight and Day isn't so much a bad movie as it is a terrible movie. I wish there were just one or two irksome points I could make that could correct the flat spin that this film finds itself in, but alas, poor Goose would be no safer this time around either. Cruise is just flat-out out of control here.
The film starts out interestingly enough: Boy meets girl, girl becomes interested in boy, boy kills everyone on the plane, girl freaks out while boy lands jumbo jet in what can only be the world's softest corn field, where boy drugs girl for her own safety. (Ah, the budding of sweet romance!) If you're not hooked yet, just wait, it gets better (or worse, depending on your position). What follows is a sort of spy-film-smorgasbord, involving car chases, double agents, secret hideouts, and of course, Cameron Diaz in a bikini. Rest assured, there's a double cross. And a triple-cross. And I think there may have even been an attempt at a quadruple-cross, but I stopped counting right around the time I had stopped caring, which I guess brings us back to the beginning. Like I said earlier, if this sort of story appeals to you, you just found a new favorite film. (Though nothing could ever be better than Battlefield Earth, right?)
What bothers me almost more than Knight and Day's disastrous decline is its preliminary promise. After all, James Mangold (Copland; Girl, Interrupted; and Walk the Line) is a fine director. Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz and Peter Sarsgaard are fine actors. So how does a would-be blockbuster go bust at the starting block? Simple, bad writing. I don't know screenwriter Patrick O'Neill, but given that Knight and Day was his feature film debut, I'm guessing I won't have to know him, as he won't soon be selling more scripts. But O'Neill doesn't deserve the full brunt of the blame. Most of it, sure, but not all of it. Mangold chose the start-and-stop pacing. Mangold directed Cruise's campy character. Mangold ultimately made the calls, and those calls likely won't be returned for a while. At this particular point, I'm not even sure that I'd return Mangold's calls.
To call this film a flop would be to call the sinking of the Titanic a travel delay. It's not just that it's stupid. It's not just that it's ridiculous. It's not just that it's clumsy. It's that it's all of those things and so much more (or less, again depending on your position). Night or day, there's never a good time to watch a film this bad.
