Knight and Day
It’s been a good long while since Tom Cruise has been this loose and fun onscreen. As much as I have enjoyed/admired films like “Eyes Wide Shut,” “Minority Report,” “Valkyrie,” “War of the Worlds,” and the underrated “Lions for Lambs,” you have to go all the way back to “Jerry Maguire” and the first “Mission: Impossible” to find Cruise this enjoyable to watch. Welcome back Tom.
But will audiences buy it? Hopefully. Yeah, the script by Patrick O’Neill jumps the shark damn-near every other scene as Cruise’s Roy Miller leads Cameron Diaz’s June Havens around the world for…a battery? Really? Still, this isn’t like any other battery (although its’ creator, played by Paul Dano, is kind of like any other nerd), and spooks (like Peter Sarsgaard) and arms dealers (like Jordi Mollà ) will do anything to get their hands on it.
There’s a twist, though. The feds claim Miller has jumped his own shark and gone rogue. Needless to say, June shouldn’t trust him (and if you don’t get frustrated with the amount of times she does specifically what Miller said NOT to do, well, there’s no getting into this movie for you), but part of the pleasure in Cruise’s performance is the uncertainty we feel in Miller as an audience. Roy is so loopy, and sometimes so over-the-top, that even we aren’t sure what to believe. But like June, we go with him anyway.
Of course, this being Hollywood, we know how things will end up in the end. Like “Charade” (the underrated Stanley Donan classic with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn), Hitch’s “North by Northwest,” “Conspiracy Theory,” and pretenders like “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” (which in retrospect never mustered this film’s sense of genuine fun and intrigue) before it, James Mangold’s thriller relies on star power to make us believe the implausibility. Thankfully, Cruise and Diaz (who I’ve never completely warmed to, but delights here) have plenty to spare in a film that twists and turns (and yes, doesn’t really hold up under close scrutiny) and- along with some fun and exciting action scenes- keeps things light and entertaining. Who knew the director of “Walk the Line,” “3:10 to Yuma,” and “Girl, Interrupted” would work so well as a purveyor of Hollywood nonsense? Maybe they should give him the chance to make more movies a year…he’s certainly helped brighten up this summer…
