Review of Knight and Day (2010) by Kathryn P — 05 Dec 2011

Give Tom Cruise props for lampooning his own action star characters. Cruise plays a parody of the CIA superman who appears in a lot of films including his own "Mission: Impossible" series. Like other superspies Cruise is always three steps ahead even when the enemy is improvising, is a professional-level master at driving, diving, shooting, bomb-making, bomb-defusing and anything else that comes up and dresses impeccably while doing it all.

The producers of this farce, though, take it to the next level when they allow Knight to simply walk machine gun fire late in the film in order to profess his affection for Cameron's June. Cruise's natural lunacy also serves him well as the film careens from one setting to another and one scene to another often with just June's drugged somnambulant recollections to form the bridge from one action set piece to the next.

The lesser talented Diaz is fairly replicable here and, like Cruise, her age is starting to become a factor in the choices she should be making. They seem a little winded by the action scenes and while both are still trim, they appear more beefy than toned in the beach scenes.

Less can be said of the plot or other characters as film simply follows the James Bond template of exotic locales where stuff gets blown up real good except the pace and volume are turned up to 11. In short, an enjoyable little popcorn film you will quickly forget.