Knight and Day

Director: James Mangold
Cast: Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Viola Davis and Peter Sarsgaard
Releasing in cinemas: 15 July 2010
Rated: M

Knight and Day is worth the price of a ticket just to see Cameron Diaz strutting her stuff in a little yellow dress and high boots. Teamed with Tom Cruise, they’re a combination made in heaven, ready for non-stop wacky thrills. Making James Bond look like a lifeless wimp, Cruise returns in top form and Diaz matches him in every scene. A glib script and stylish visuals, coupled with spectacular digital effects, ensure a night at the movies from which you’ll come out smiling. The stunt team earn their money too, CGI or not, with Cruise performing some of the risky stunts himself.

Bumping into each other at Wichita airport, high-powered but slightly demented secret agent Roy Miller (Tom Cruise) and relatively normal June Havens (Cameron Diaz) - incredibly a restorer of old Pontiacs - are soon to be involved in a madcap adventure where the action seldom stops. When it does, the respite feels good before the action hits you again squarely between the eyes.

A crazy sequence follows where the plane’s crew and passengers are decimated by Roy while June powders her nose. She comes out to discover the flight full of dead people, also lacking the necessary pilots - not a little disconcerting.

So, June finds herself pursued around the globe for the ‘McGuffin’, in this case an everlasting battery worth billions. While keeping her out of harm most of the time, Roy the nutty super agent might have a dubious connection with the enemy. There’s also the FBI and a company of very bad guys after Roy and the battery.

The trip is full of comic thrills and mad car chases; even getting amongst raging bulls during a stunning sequence in Seville. A wild road race on freeways near Boston, and an exciting pursuit over rooftops in Austria are guaranteed to keep you on the edge of your seat.

June begins to suspect Roy, even though he’s been gallantly saving her. Fortunately June’s getting the hang of this espionage business and knocking out a fair number of the opposition herself. In the end, June learns she needs to trust Roy, and in helping him finds herself capable of most extraordinary feats.

Tom Cruise (Valkyrie), making a comeback in his uneven career, should score points as the cheerfully psychopathic whack job Roy, a sharpshooter with more athletic skill than Erroll Flynn on a good day. It’s a marvelous turn. Cameron Diaz (My Sister’s Keeper) is always a charmer on the screen, and totally enjoys her part as the blonde and bedazzled heroine who’s totally lost the plot for much of the picture. She works exceptionally well with Cruise.

Director James Mangold (3.10 to Yuma) makes the most of Patrick O’Neill’s wildly absurd screenplay, laying over it a pseudo-serious veneer of ‘Bourne’ style travel adventure. Cheeky one liners abound - “I’ll kill myself, then her!” Technically the seamless integration of CGI and stunt work produces some high powered thrills, no more so than the Seville sequence with the charging bulls; and in a train fight you can really say ‘hanging by a sausage’. There are so many shootouts I lost count after reel two. The Wild West never had it so good.

Perhaps this is not the movie for those who enjoy deep espionage thrillers like The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, but for most of us Cruise’s deranged fun ride will prove top entertainment. You have to say Hollywood does this kind of thing particularly well.

John Bale