Knight and Day (2010)

Directed by: James Mangold

Premise: A woman (Cameron Diaz) meets a rogue spy (Tom Cruise) on an airplane flight and the two become targets of counter-intelligence agents.

What Works: Tom Cruise is very funny in Knight and Day and the film gives him a chance to exercise comedic talent that he has rarely had the opportunity to use on film.

What Doesn’t: There are all sorts of things wrong with Knight and Day. The biggest flaw is the relationship between Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise’s characters. She ought to be scared of this man and try to figure him out but she spends most of her time bickering with him like a ball and chain stereotype. Her relationship with Cruise’s character is unconvincing and why he keeps her around makes no sense. Knight and Day makes huge leaps in credibility and logic, with the characters traveling at will around the world without means or reason. The film has no sense of forward motion; there is no goal that the story or the characters are working their way toward and the action scenes are very random as though they were conceived separately from the story and then plugged into the film.

Bottom Line: Knight and Day is a hollow retread of the my-boyfriend-is-a-spy formula. It isn’t very good as an action film or as a comedy and it never has enough of either to succeed.