Knight and Day (2010) – AMC Loews Harvard Square. No American experience is complete also without catching a film at the local theatre. There’s been movie trailers running of Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz’s new action-comedy for a month or so now – the Best store at Compass Point has a big LCD TV at the entrance showing its trailer – so after work on Thursday evening I headed to the theatre at Harvard Square to get a ticket for it.
In the film: Cruise plays a super agent, Roy Miller, and Diaz, June Havens, a slightly ditzy-headed, coming to middle-age woman whose profession involves restoring antique cars. Her hormones go ringing when she bumps into Cruise, seemingly accidentally at the domestic airport. What starts looking like a typical boy-meets girl on airplane turns upside down when Cruise kills everyone on board, and proceeds to crash the plane.
A lot of action-comedies are oriented around the cop-buddies subgenre, so it’s refreshing to see a film like Knight and Day return to the likes of True Lies. The super secret agent, alongside a female partner who has no clue early on what he really does, and when she finds herself dodging bullets, flying cars, and explosions and high-octane action, the comedy follows. The film has been compared to Mr. and Mrs. Smith for its cute couple interaction dialog when bullets are flying, but the comedic stuff in Knight and Day is more pronounced.
What’s especially worked well is that Cruise is tremendously likable in this film. He’s super proficient as an super-agent/assassin on the run, but it’s equally supported by that toothy and boyish grin of his as he tries to calm a near hysterical June who has no comprehension why she’s constantly getting shot at.
Several of the action scenes are pretty inventive, including one involving Roy on a motobike getting chased by bulls and the aforementioned airplane fight, and others approaching James Bond in the camp factor, e.g. a scene involving a remote-controlled drone on his personal hideout. The action scenes don’t drag too. They’re compact, and not filmed, thankfully, with the steroid-induced monkey cinematography that’s typical of Michael Bay’s films. There’s also a subplot that’s mined ruthlessly and to varying effect: specifically one about June constantly getting drugged into unconsciousness for her own good and it’s hilarious, but when it occurs again at the film’s end, it’s feels tacky.
The film smartly keeps its attention on its two main leads – Cruise and Diaz – and they play off each other well, and the sexual tension is deliberately kept low-key until the climatic last act when June gets injected with truth serum and has a line about sex that will put you in stitches of laughter. There’re supporting actors of course, several of which I immediately recognized: Peter Sarsgaard playing an almost similar role to Flight Plan (starring Jodie Foster from 5 years ago), and Dale Dye in a rare acting and speaking role – he’s well-known in films but normally as a technical advisor.
A good portion of the film was shot in Boston too, and it was a real kick for me as a visitor to recognize the different locations throughout.
Knight and Day is by no means perfect however. There are huge plot holes that make zero sense and you won’t even need to look very hard to see them. But that I could live with. More seriously is that while the film is enjoyable for the first 100 minutes, it’s shockingly silly and outright absurd in the last 10. The ending, starting from how the antagonist is disposed all the way to the end credits is so lackadaisical it’s really jarring.
Still, the film was worth the USD10 admission ticket. For those of us in Singapore catching the film, you can always leave early 10 minutes early when the film is at its high point.:)
Recent comments