Knight and Day
Release Date:
June 25, 2010
On the Big Board |
| Position |
Staff |
In Brief |
| 19/123 |
David Mumpower |
This joins Mission: Impossible III on the list of great Tom Cruise flicks undone by America's aggravation with Tom Cruise. I always love a good Charade knock-off. |
| 80/190 |
Max Braden |
It's funny to watch Diaz ogling Cruise, and the action may mimic Mission Impossible, but Cruise is so un-Cruise it seems like he's channeling another actor. |
"No one follows us or I kill myself and then her."
I will write more about why our staff is giddy with anticipation about watching Knight & Day but the above quote is explanation enough. Sometimes, a line of dialogue oozes so much cleverness that the one quip sells us on the entire premise. This is the case with Knight & Day, a movie whose creators have deduced the best way to utilize Tom Cruise these days. If the entire world thinks he is crazy, why wouldn't we just put him in movies where every character feels the same way? Sublime in its simplicity, this bit liberates Cruise from all of the nonsense that has sabotaged his career ever since that ill-fated Oprah appearance.
The beauty of Knight & Day is that it clearly makes the connection for the viewer that they are watching Cruise's Ethan Hunt character from Mission: Impossible placed in a situation where he may have had a mental breakdown. What a stretch. Even better, this looks like Cruise and co-star Cameron Diaz's answer to the underrated Mel Gibson/Julia Roberts movie, Conspiracy Theory. As was the case with Roberts, Diaz's character will spend the entirety of the movie doing exactly what the viewer is: wondering how far around the bend Tom Cruise has gone. This is an elegant solution for how to cast him in comfortable roles without having his awkward recent history damage the film's box office as happened with the magnificent, overlooked Mission Impossible: III.
Say what you will about Cruise, here is a list of his non-Mission: Impossible movies in the 2000s: Vanilla Sky, Minority Report, The Last Samurai, Collateral, War of the Worlds, Lions for Lambs, Tropic Thunder, Valkyrie. Few performers in this industry can claim such a high quality of work over the same period. His decisions on which projects to choose have always been the gold standard in our industry. And we think he has struck gold once more with Knight & Day. (David Mumpower/BOP)
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