ThisFilmIsOn

Overall I consider myself a pretty well rounded individual but if (if!) I do have a significant character flaw it is in my unavoidable compulsion to defend Tom Cruise. I don’t even consider myself to be much of a fan of ‘the Cruiser’ but when you look at his performances in the likes of Rain Man, Jerry Maguire and Magnolia I challenge any one to deny Cruise’s occasional dalliances with excellence. Sadly however, for every Collateral there’s a Knight and Day.

Directed by the equally hit and miss James Mangold (Walk the Line, Kate and Leopold) Knight and Day pairs Cruise with Cameron Diaz for an action comedy that’s neither explosive nor funny. After a chance meeting at an airport Diaz’s mechanic Julie is thrust into the chaotic and dangerous world of Roy Miller (Cruise), a renegade spy with a slightly skewed moral compass. As the pair globe trot in an attempt to evade Peter Sarsgaard’s unenthused FBI goon ‘Fitzgerald’ they form a bond, which then breaks, but is then reformed, only to break again, but it’s fine cos’ it reforms, before it breaks again but then it’s all fine cos’ they bond again.

What’s confusing about the movie is that it fails to total the sum of its parts. With the likes of Copland, Girl, Interrupted and Walk the Line, Mangold has proven that he’s handy with a megaphone. Diaz has been both funnier and more likeable in numerous movies and supporting players Sarsgaard and Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood) have both been significantly better than they are here.

The film itself feels like a genre riffing amalgam of five or six below average movies squashed together to make yet another below average movie. The action, whilst sleek and seamless is old hat and no different to what you will have already seen in numerous actioners. All in all the film comes across as lazy, a fact compounded by some bizarre blackout sequences where huge chunks of what may have been engaging action are repeatedly skipped over for what I can only assume is supposed to be comedic effect. 

Surprisingly, the one or two smirks I did muster were the result of Cruise’s unbalanced agent and his relaxed attitude to life and death situations. However, the joke quickly becomes tired and if I’m honest he never takes the gag far enough for a proper belly laugh. With Mel Gibson monopolising Hollywood’s quota of crazy Cruise has been able to go about his scientologing relatively unnoticed of late but if ‘Roy Miller’ was ever going to be more than an archetype Cruise really needed to layer on the bat shit with a spade.

In pitch alone the film echoes The Bourne Identity but that’s where the comparison ends. All the raw intensity of Bourne is absent and anything resembling a quality performance is lost amidst a ramshackle story stuck together with bubblegum. Whilst the film does very little to offend it does very little of anything. Even now, less than twenty four hours after watching it I can’t really remember how the film ends and that is fundamentally all you need to know.