Hola all. Massawyrm here.
Inexplicable. If I were to describe this with one and only one word, that would be it. Inexplicable. Walking out of this, I wasn’t entirely sure what the fuck it was that I’d just watched. It is a special brand of insanity that borders upon self-parody. It is not good; in fact, it barely qualifies as entertaining. I can see the kernel of the idea that interested FOX in making this, and I’ve heard from a number of sources that the original script WITCHITA is hilarious, but none of that translates here. KNIGHT AND DAY is a mess - a big budget, A-list disaster that will lead to some serious head scratching and navel gazing amid its fallout.
Conceptually, I like what they were doing here. The film is your typical Ethan Hunt/James Bond sort of big budget action thriller, instead told from the point of view of the Bond Girl – in this case Cameron Diaz. When Diaz ends up on the wrong plane at the wrong time, she is witness to Tom Cruise murdering every last person on the plane. The kicker? They were all assassins hired to kill him. The fate of the two becomes intertwined as Cruise drags her along, often unwillingly, from action set-piece to action set piece. And as unwilling as she is, this means he often has to drug her to knock her out and get her out of harm’s way.
Doesn’t sound so bad, right? Sure. Except that since Diaz is our protagonist, we are treated to a number of lead-ins to action sequences that we never see…because Diaz blacks out only to wake up safe and sound in the next part of the movie. At first, this is cute. They skip past a number of scenes we’ve seen a million times anyway. But there comes a point when some kind of missile firing drone begins raining hate on our heroes at just the point the movie needed some action and BAM! Knocked out again. She wakes up safe and sound. Again. Making matters worse, the few action scenes we do enjoy in their entirety end up bland and ridiculously over the top in the sort of way that makes you beg for Michael Bay to have stepped in. This is one of those films that desperately attempts to reach his level of insanity while lacking the skill or vision to do so entertainingly.
The film’s final nail in the coffin is that the characters are one-dimensional clichés without the slightest hint of character to be found anywhere on their person. Tom Cruise is a secret agent who may or may not be crazy, but they don’t really do a good job keeping that secret very long. And Cameron Diaz is your typical…Cameron Diaz character…but without the nuance, if you catch my meaning. They’re both milquetoast, boilerplate retreads – paint by numbers renderings in which no one has bothered to, you know, paint in the fucking numbers.
Unfortunately, someone thought it would be great to try and market an action film to women, without actually including the types of things women enjoy. Instead is it filled with stereotypes people THINK women enjoy – the kind of trashy, Harlequin Romance moments in which a guy walks out halfway through a gunfight to kiss the girl, while the bullets magically whizz past them in slow-mo before returning to the firefight. Yes, this is silly, but not in a fun way; it is silly in a ludicrous way, the kind in which you constantly turn to your spouse/buddy/whatever and wonder quietly what the fuck it is you’re watching.
And just to add insult to injury, the title of the film, KNIGHT AND DAY, doesn’t make a lick of goddamned sense either. Not a bit. One of the characters is named Knight. But Day? Nowhere to be found; just a cutesy, worthless title for a cutesy, worthless film. A clumsy pastiche of every espionage cliché you’ve ever seen, this seems like it wanted to be a parody at one point, only instead began taking itself a *little* too seriously. A complete and utter waste of your time, this should be passed upon at your earliest opportunity.
Until next time friends,
Massawyrm
Got something for the Wyrm? Mail it here.
