Review: Knight and Day
The previews for Knight and Day looked like fun, and I like both Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, so I was disappointed to hear that the movie was doing badly at the box office. But I read an interesting article about the studio's failure to get the marketing right; marketer Tony Sella said they were trying to “evoke a film like North by Northwest,” and added: “It's a grown up film. That was the whole theory behind selling the film, that it was a cool, adult movie.”
So (even though I didn't like North by Northwest) I figured it was worth catching Knight and Day before it disappeared from theatres. So I went to the late-night showing tonight.
I was one of about six people in the theatre, which on the one hand helped because I could mostly treat it like it was my own private showing, but on the other hand probably meant I didn't laugh as much as I would have with either a larger audience that was enjoying it or no other audience at all.
Still, I did laugh fairly often. I enjoyed the movie pretty much all the way through. It has some rough spots for feminists, but it eventually makes up for most of them. It's got a fun, even if not all that new, overall plot, and the superheroics near the start make clear that you shouldn't be taking it terribly seriously. A fun and enjoyable romp.
It probably helps if you find Cruise and/or Diaz attractive, as I do. Cruise is in his late forties in real life, but he's still in great shape and still has a great smile.
I also like the subversions of a couple of standard action-movie tropes, especially in one particular entertainingly over-the-top escape sequence fairly near the beginning.
It's certainly not Great Cinema. But it's a fun action movie; I certainly enjoyed it more than either of the first two Mission: Impossible movies (never got around to seeing the third, though I heard good things about it). Not as much fun as the Charlie's Angels movies, but still worth seeing if you like this kind of thing.
