Emergency Alert: Knight and Day

I like Cameron Diaz. Tom Cruise is ok. I like action movies. Romantic comedies can be ok. But the Diaz-Cruise-Action-Romance "Knight and Day" is not ok and I didn't like it. You won't like it either. It's one of those innocent-person-gets-dragged-into-dangerous-situation-by-guy-who-may-be-spy-or-may-be-crazy-and-then-they're-on-the-run-the-whole-rest-of-the-movie kind of story. These types of movies are extremely hard to pull off, because you have to have violence and dangerous stunts happening all the time while the two characters go through comic dialogue to come to like each other by the end of the movie. They tried it in the 70s with "The In-Laws" (with Peter Falk as the spy and Alan Arkin as the innocent) (grade: C) and they tried it in the 80s with "Real Men" (with Jim Belushi as the spy and John Ritter as the innocent) (grade: B-). The grade for this mess: D. It had its moments early on, some of the crazy patter Tom Cruise spouted to Cameron Diaz was kinda funny (like holding his arm up in the air and saying "With me," then lowering it and saying "without me" to indicate her chance of staying alive), and some of the early action was good, but then they started doing this weird thing where he drugs her in the middle of an action shot, and when she wakes up, the action is over, which was repeated several times. I get it, it's a comedy bit, but it's not really that funny, and it robs the movie of some chances to redeem a somewhat sluggish plot with some real action scenes. If you're looking for a turn-your-brain-off kind of movie or just really like to look at the lead actors (Cameron in particular looks amazing), go see this movie. But if you love action-romance movies, don't. You have been warned.

Posted by: GMan