Knight and Day is an enjoyable, entertaining farce of an action movie. It zips along from locale to locale, keeping you chuckling with its occasional good humor, if rarely laughing out loud or finding it particularly witty. At its best, some of the editing is quite expressive (especially when representing Cameron Diaz' flickering consciousness after she's been drugged), giving the film the feel of a movie of higher pedigree than you might otherwise expect from such a mid-summer diversion.
The thing is, you've seen it all before, and you've seen Tom Cruise do it all before, and in fact, as you are watching it, you begin to feel that you've seen Tom Cruise do it all before in every single movie you've ever seen him in. That ultimately Mission Impossible is every bit as much of a farce as Knight and Day, and that his characters in those "serious" action movies are not a bit more believable or interesting than the one presented here, in glorious two-dimensionality. You think, maybe they should pass out 2D glasses before you see a Tom Cruise movie, to make sure that nothing ever pokes out as too realistic and jarring. Because that's the kind of movies he's good at, and that's what we pay for when we go see one of them: we pay to be reassured that nothing will ever rise above the level of entertaining into the realm of the thoughtful or the disturbing.
Of course this isn't very fair. Tom Cruise has been in a number of interesting movies over the years. He was in Stanley Kubrick's last, strange effort. He had that crazy role in Magnolia, playing some sort of manic control-freak guru leading a self-help movement that exploited people's weak-mindedness. (Talk about a stretch!). But, being fair aside, I think we all know what I mean when I say, Tom Cruise just makes the same movie over and over again, and we pay the same ten, errr, thirteen dollars, over and over again, to feel the same weird kind of comfortable we feel seeing him be shallow, attractive, narcissistic, assertive, and completely inscrutable. That's just the way it is.
The thing is, you've seen it all before, and you've seen Tom Cruise do it all before, and in fact, as you are watching it, you begin to feel that you've seen Tom Cruise do it all before in every single movie you've ever seen him in. That ultimately Mission Impossible is every bit as much of a farce as Knight and Day, and that his characters in those "serious" action movies are not a bit more believable or interesting than the one presented here, in glorious two-dimensionality. You think, maybe they should pass out 2D glasses before you see a Tom Cruise movie, to make sure that nothing ever pokes out as too realistic and jarring. Because that's the kind of movies he's good at, and that's what we pay for when we go see one of them: we pay to be reassured that nothing will ever rise above the level of entertaining into the realm of the thoughtful or the disturbing.
Of course this isn't very fair. Tom Cruise has been in a number of interesting movies over the years. He was in Stanley Kubrick's last, strange effort. He had that crazy role in Magnolia, playing some sort of manic control-freak guru leading a self-help movement that exploited people's weak-mindedness. (Talk about a stretch!). But, being fair aside, I think we all know what I mean when I say, Tom Cruise just makes the same movie over and over again, and we pay the same ten, errr, thirteen dollars, over and over again, to feel the same weird kind of comfortable we feel seeing him be shallow, attractive, narcissistic, assertive, and completely inscrutable. That's just the way it is.