Review: Knight and Day

I've always been a fan of Tom Cruise. One of my favorite movies of all time is Top Gun, and it's my personal opinion that he is a great actor when it comes to action movies. Cameron Diaz is one of those ladies who sort of has that classic beauty that never goes away regardless of what role she is playing, and putting the two of them together in a spy flick seemed like a pretty good combination to me when I first saw previews for this movie a while back.

WHAT I LIKED...

Most importantly, I liked the stunts. Any action movie Tom Cruise is involved with has great stunts and Knight and Day is no exception to the rule. I also liked the acting for the most part. Say what you will about Tom Cruise and his craziness in everyday life, but when it comes to somewhat off-kilter humor in the middle of a fight scene he does a pretty good job. Diaz is an excellent foil for his character, and the two of them seem to have pretty good chemistry.

Thankfully, unlike a lot of less-well-known action movies I've watched recently, this one didn't try to go too far with the twisting and turning of the plot. There was a little bit of mystery to keep me interested enough to keep watching and discover if there really was going to be a massive plot twist at the end, but not so much that I felt like the writers were trying too hard.

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE...

In the end, while the movie was a pretty decent couple of hours spent, I did feel like things were a little too formulaic. Knight and Day finds itself following a very large number of spy-movie cliches, but given that I personally think this movie was simply Cruise's tune-up to prepare for the upcoming Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, I can't be too heavily disappointed.

While I do like Cameron Diaz, and think she's a great actor, I don't think the character she had to work with here gave her much time to shine. She had her moments, but in the end the character of June was written with a hefty dose of cliche as well. Cruise's Roy Miller on the other hand seemed to be at least somewhat unique.

RATING: 6 out of 10

RECOMMENDATION...

This is a great popcorn movie if you are looking for something to get a few laughs, see some cool stunts, and marvel in a bit of nice camera work. Don't expect anything too much from it, but it is certainly worth the time if you can find it on Netflix streaming someday or grab it for a buck in the local corner Redbox.