3/10
This film is so slick, shiny, machine-tooled and lacking in emotional impact that it might just as well be made of plastic. In fact, it probably is.
I could tell you about the plot, but I'm not sure there really is one, simply a series of lame excuses for action sequences, none of which connect coherently to each other. Tom Cruise is Roy Miller (not his real name) who may or not be a rogue agent. Cameron Diaz is an innocent bystander caught up in his whirlwind adventures which involve shooting people at regular intervals while being shot at by these same faceless asassins, none of whom can shoot straight. Cruise is required to look cool and handsome, while acting omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. Diaz spends three quarters of the film being clumsy, stupid and easily-panicked before getting to be tough and cool in the last quarter. But it's hard to care what happens to these smug and uninteresting people with barely a character trait between the two of them. Make that impossible.
I suppose that somewhere in the back of the scriptwriter/director's mind(s) was the notion that this might be a kind of modern North by Northwest, with Cruise as a latter day Cary Grant and Diaz as Eva Marie Saint, being pursued across random landscapes by unnamed forces in pursuit of an elusive and irrelevant goal (in this case, some form of cheap energy). If that is true, then truly the scale of delusion is pathological. Knight And Day (the title means zilch) is to North by Northwest as a McDonalds restaurant is to the Taj Mahal.
In the world of Hollywood, genre rules supreme. Each film needs to be precisely located in the horror/family/sci fi (or whatever) pigeonhole. And of course the holy grail is a film which manages (successfully) to combine a number of different genres. K & D aspires to such complexity, and would - under interrogation - claim to be an action/comedy/thriller/romance. Just like I claim to be the love child of Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley. The romance consists of TC and CD occasionally gazing longingly at each other (but more often at the camera), or being interrupted as they are about to get it on. But the sparks of passion resolutely refuse to be ignited, because the two of them have no personalities, and, as is often the case with Major Hollywood Stars, are simply not sexy. The comedy is non-existent, though little Tom tries to banter, and goofy Cam falls over like a trouper. And the action/thrills are so mechanically and unimaginatively delivered, accompanied by a spectacularly misjudged soundtrack (cool Parisian accordion ??!!), that I sat there with my pulse barely registering a beat.
If - as I have said elsewhere - this is the continuation of the Decline of Tom Cruise, rather than (as claimed by publicity optimists) the revival of the corpse, then he has only himself to blame for signing up for such a soulless and dull movie. Even at this undemanding time of year, we need something more than simply going through the motions.
