“Knight and Day” is the absolute epitome of a bunch of Hollywood executives sitting in a room, trying to formulate the perfect movie, and it sucks. But hey, it sucks perfectly. I’m not some anti-Tom Cruise guy, I loved “War of the Worlds”, all the “Mission: Impossible” movies, and I’ll be willing to see whatever else he comes out with next, but this is definitely not how you make a comeback, by patronizing movie-goers with soulless paint-by-numbers film garbage.
Why you’ll like this:
You like the mindless predictable action-comedy film genre.
“Knight and Day” is about the everyday super-hot, yet somehow still single, girl in her late 30s who crosses paths with the more friendly American James Bond in his quest to stop evil people from doing evil things, while clearing his name and making sure no one he deems worthy gets hurt, everyone else be-damned. Let the super-cool action and hilarity ensue!
This movie is a mess from head to toe. The characters are drawn as well as my stick-figures, with the generic dialogue to match. The story is as involved as a knock-knock joke, and the action sequences are as original as Lady Gaga (HEY Gaga, you’re the lovechild of Madonna and Andre 3000, you’re not new!). Frankly, insulting this movie even feels like a waste of time, I should honestly just copy/paste other insults in order for it to be fitting, but even I’m not that lazy.
The biggest shock for me was that there were so many actors that I respect involved. Peter Sarsgaard is one of my favorite actors, I hope he made a pretty penny off of this, because I’d like to see him involved in better projects. Same goes for Paul Dano and Viola Davis, those are three tremendously talented actors who should in no way be associated with trash like this, their talent far exceeds the mundane generic movie like this. We’ve come to expect Cameron Diaz to work on pop films, and Tom Cruise was clearly in dire need of some good publicity, so I can’t say they lose any respect since it was only there in moderation to begin with.
Why you won’t like this:
You respect yourself.
When you have an uninspired script, director and actors, then you can really only come away with a total waste of time. I refuse to let a film that relies on stupid villains (and audience members), old hat jokes, and a stupendous amount of luck get anything positive said about it. A horrid attempt at taking my money, luckily a friend paid for it at the dollar theater, so the joke is on you Hollywood, but how do I get my time back? I’ll find a way, and it’ll be original when I do.
1 out of 5 stars.
Starring: Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Peter Sarsgaard, Paul Dano, Viola Davis, Maggie Grace
Director: James Mangold
Genre: Action, Comedy
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 1 hr. 49 min.
Release Date: June 23, 2010