James Mangold (3:10 To Yuma) directs the latest Tom Cruise vehicle featuring Cameron Diaz as the reluctant love interest. Both actors are really starting to show their age, but Knight and Day holds a small charm that makes it very “date” friendly.  If you’re gonna enjoy this movie though… even just a little, you really have to leave yur brain at the door…. seriously! On another note, I really don’t think this is the Cruise career ending disaster a lot of the critics are panning it out to be. It may not be a great film, but I’ve sat through a lot worse.

Roy Miller is a covert agent and June Havens is a woman caught between him and those he claims set him up. As their globetrotting adventure erupts into a maze of double-crosses, close escapes, false identities, and head-spinning romantic snafus, they come to realize that all they can count on is each other.

On the plus side, performances were great across the board. Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz have excellent chemistry and play off each other very well. Smaller roles in the supporting cast like Marc Blucas as Rodney and Paul Dano as Simon Feck are fun, creating memorable moments in the film. All in all, the film is not lacking in the acting department, and could have been so much better under different circumstances.

What went wrong…. there was sooo much. Lets start with the score… Knight and Day has one of the worst scores I’ve heard in recent memory. Every scene that could have held a little tension was broken by happy go lucky European party music (for lack of a better way of describing it). The music just drained any kind of suspense or thrill you could have hoped for from any of the action scenes. Next… Tom Cruise. I’ll be the first to admit he’s still a very sexy man (take that in the least gay way possible)… he’s got a great smile… but I think, to the film’s detriment, he smiles his way through 90% of his scenes. Again, this robs the film from any kind of tension. At no point did I feel the characters were any real danger. Oh wait, there’s still more… the black outs… a few times the duo were about to enter a high action scene, Roy (Cruise) would give June (Diaz) a knock out drug. This would then be followed by a few quick, blurry Diaz POV flashes of what could have been some great action sequences… but we didn’t get to see them… we’re just fed the book ends… I guess they were really short on budget. And finally the CG… what little CG was used was definatley not up to snuff. The whole motorcycle scene just oozed fake…

So… bottom line, if you’re into Cruise and Diaz, and looking for something extremely light and unoffensive for you and the girlfriend to see (if you’re a girl reading this… it doesn’t quite work the same), Knight and Day is a good “date” film. Actually, my girlfriend enjoyed it quite a bit… so all’s not lost. But for the serious film fan, Knight and Day is plagued by bad editing, bad music, and quite honestly a bad story… I can’t recommend this as a theatrical release, wait for a rental.

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