“Knight and Day” places itself nicely amongst the many other mediocre films that have plagued this summer. While it is no doubt a fun film, it is extremely cliché and after a while you stop caring about the characters. That is, if you ever did.
We meet June Havens (Cameron Diaz) in an airport where she bumps into Roy Miller (Tom Cruise). They eventually wind up on the same plane where June, who thinks she’s headed to her sister’s wedding, engages in conversation with Roy and clearly starts to fall for him. While she’s in the plane’s bathroom engaged in conversation with herself over whether she should make out with him or not (though they just met and know absolutely nothing about each other), Miller kills everyone on the plane because *gasp*, they weren’t really just passengers. As this is happening, June remains in the bathroom, completely deaf to the gunshots.
After they crash land, Havens becomes the target of government officials because of her interaction with Miller, who we discover is a rogue agent. This is where everything becomes predictable and a bit unreal. Despite Miller’s many warnings, June enters into a vehicle with the government officials, making her a damsel in distress and causing Miller to have to save her at the last minute. This happens more times than not. Interestingly enough, though there’s a huge car chase where things explode and what seems like hundreds of bullets are shot, you never once feel like they are in danger; this is one issue I have with the film. June Havens seems impenetrable and it takes away from the audience being scared for her life; if anything, you will probably laugh at her stupidity at times. But at the same time, it takes away from the movie feeling like a “real” secret agent movie. If Superman, Batman, and Spider Man can get hurt, Roy Miller and June Havens should be able to also. Even James Bond gets roughed up sometimes.
Something else that irked me about “Knight and Day” was the lack of characterization. Because of this, we fail to feel much for either character, something that is important in a film. It seems that the writer and director spent a majority of the time on the production and look of the film instead of developing both Diaz and Cruise’s characters. They have their bits of comedy here and there which are great touches to the film but apart from that, the viewer does not know much about them.
“Knight and Day” is a good film but it leaves a lot to be desired. It is the explosions and action that you expect in an action movie. It also has the flirtation and goofiness that you expect in a romantic comedy. Unfortunately, in the process of attempting to combine both genres into one movie, things have been left out and forgotten and a lot of it is very cliché and predictable.
Overall Rating: 7.0/10 = C-
By: Kenni Nwajagu
Contributing Editor for Gossip On This
