‘Knight and Day’ delivers lots of speed, little substance

Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise in "Knight and Day" June (Cameron Diaz) hangs onto rogue CIA agent Roy Miller (Tom Cruise) in the action thriller “Knight and Day.”

If you took all the breathtaking stunts and wild chase sequences in “Knight and Day” and pressed them together so tight that they squeezed everything else out, you’d still have a bloated, cliche-riddled Hollywood action movie.

Only shorter.

A thin line separates a tongue-in-cheek spy adventure (any 007 film starring Roger Moore) from an overt spy movie parody (any “Austin Powers” comedy).

“Knight and Day” has no idea where that line went.

So, some of Tom Cruise’s impressive displays of athletic acumen approach the level of a fun and clever Jackie Chan fight sequence.

Others, such as a scene where Cruise steps into machine gunfire to prove his love (and the bullets magically miss him!) hearkens back to the silliness of Leslie Nielsen’s “Naked Gun” comedies.

“Knight and Day” opens with Cruise flashing some free advertising for a cool set of shades (he did wonders for Ray-Ban Wayfarers in “Risky Business”) while hanging around an airport.

He checks out women, but not for the regular reasons. When he finally spots June Havens (Cameron Diaz), he makes his move by pretending to bump into her and transferring unknown contraband into her purse.

We find out his name is Roy Miller and he’s a rogue CIA agent who’s been accused of kidnapping a dweeby genius named Simon Feck (Paul Dano) with his tiny invention: a battery with perpetual, renewable energy.

“Knight and Day” apparently wants to be a source of perpetual energy as well. Director James Mangold throws the narrative thrusters into overdrive, pushing Roy and his unwitting partner June from one hyperbolic survival sequence to the next. (Read more…)

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