Chris Knipp
06-23-2010, 03:10 AM
James Mangold: KNIGHT AND DAY (2010)
http://img375.imageshack.us/img375/7277/knightandday.jpg
Mission preposterous
People will cast around for comparisons to explain what Knight and Day copies most. Is it Brad and Angelina in Mr. and Mrs. Smith? Not really, but certainly dozens of sources have been gleefully plundered. A close comparison is early Bourne, with Diaz's Franka Potente to Cruise's Matt Damon, but with the humor, braggadocio, and indifference to logic of the original James Bond stories.
This couple in adversity, like the Bourne one, is a linkage that comes about seemingly by accident when Joan Havens (Diaz) happens to wind up on a nearly empty plane to Kansas City that Roy Miller (Cruise) hijacks, after its crew tries to kill him. Miller is a CIA man, or a former one. He's gone rogue, or so some say. He's also in possession of some kind of inexhaustible energy source MacGuffin thingie created by a brilliant teenager nerd pal of his called Simon Feck (Paul Dano). Naturally everybody wants to get hold of this thingie, and later of young Simon. Sarsgaard is a CIA agent called Fitzgerald who's chasing Roy, and his boss is a black lady called Isabel (Viola Davis). Joan, who rebuilds classic American cars, is on her way to her sister's wedding. The greatest tribute to Roy's skill and a sign of his attention to the human side of things is that he gets her to the wedding, after a few car explosions and chases and dozens of dead bodies. Roy has two main ways of relating to people. He kisses them or he kills them. There isn't time for much else. Cruise carries this off with panache. Diaz is equal to the demands of her role: ditsy -- but glamorous and sexy -- blonde who's also a Charlie's Angel.
When the stuff happens on the plane at the beginning, it's not remotely believable. It isn't meant to be. How believable is any blockbuster action? How believable is anything anywhere? Knight and Day establishes right away (watch how the plane rocks when there's turbulence) that this is a garish, over-the-top comedy. The ridiculous opening sequence clearly establishes that this is an outrageous comedy and a romance as much as it's an actioner. The filmmakers are simply betting that the vivacity of the action and the charm of the stars will get you involved and that involvement will grow rather than diminish as the story progresses. The action is preposterous, but the protagonists are in trouble, so you forget it's silly and start to worry -- but you don't forget to laugh, and you're meant to. The movie manages to ramp up all three aspects and keep the cocktail stirred. This is a shameless effort to appeal simultaneously to three different genre demographics: Comedy, Action, Romance, but it just may succeed.
Is this Ron Miller (Tom Cruise) a man on a crucial mission -- or an out-of-control nut case? This is the question this movie poses, and this is a role that both Cruise's friends and his enemies may find appropriate. . . But to stick with this movie and enjoy its wild action-romance ride, you need to be able to forget any distaste the actor's couch-jumping antics may have awakened and focus on how interesting he has been in films like Magnolia, Tropic Thunder, and Collateral. Cut the guy a break, remember the great movies he has been in, observe how well he and ace comedienne Cameron Diaz work together, and there's entertainment to be had here.
Knight and Day is completely empty and pointless, but also quite a lot of fun. It's too long (like so many of the new pictures), and contains such a rich, indigestible (and expensive) mélange of action stuff -- somersaulting cars exploding on highways, shootouts, chases, fires -- and such lush locations, including Pamplona at bull run time, picturesque Austrian towns, Langley, and the Orient Express, you feel overfed. But then you walk out and it's all, pleasantly, forgotten, except for Tom Cruise's manic smile and Cameron Diaz's look of wide-eyed astonishment, which are enough to take home from a summer blockbuster in a season when one of the NY Times' lead critics praises Jonah Hex and Pixar's strung-out third installment of Toy Story is hailed as a masterpiece.
Empty of solid content though it may be, Knight and Day succeeds, for one thing, because it does something woefully lacking in today's blockbusters -- alternates the heavy action with quiet times. Here, they're usually romantic pauses, in which the lady (Diaz) changes into something more comfortable. Joe Carnahan, who has a sense of humor and knows his way around tough-guy scenes, would have done well to keep this principle in mind when he made The A-Team, a movie that never lets up and consequently leaves you just feeling weary. You remember nothing but Liam Neeson puffing on cigars in a movie he should never have been in. Knight and Day has sense enough to give its leads appropriate roles and keep varying its rhythms so you have a chance to breathe.
In development, this movie went through various titles; the one it landed with, Knight and Day, only makes sense at the end and even then won't hit you over the head with its logic. K & D also went through many writers -- at least nine. Considering that, it's something of a tribute to the director and his cast (which includes the equally excellent Peter Sarsgaard, Paul Dano, and Viola Davis) that the whole thing hangs together as well as it does and the different sequences don't just feel like pieces in a disassembled puzzle.
Tom Cruise's character is invincible and his accidental partner, Joan, tends to get overexcited or lose her ability to cope with the gangs of assassins, the 90-mile-an-hour car chases, and the explosions and Roy resorts to drugging her so he can whisk them both safely away. From being scared and dubious, Joan begins to have more and more confidence in Roy and as this turns to attraction she shows startling abilities of her own: "you've got skills," Roy tells her. Indeed. And however preposterous, so does Knight and Day.
Published on Cinescene. (http://www.cinescene.com/knipp/knightday.htm)
http://img375.imageshack.us/img375/7277/knightandday.jpg
Mission preposterous
People will cast around for comparisons to explain what Knight and Day copies most. Is it Brad and Angelina in Mr. and Mrs. Smith? Not really, but certainly dozens of sources have been gleefully plundered. A close comparison is early Bourne, with Diaz's Franka Potente to Cruise's Matt Damon, but with the humor, braggadocio, and indifference to logic of the original James Bond stories.
This couple in adversity, like the Bourne one, is a linkage that comes about seemingly by accident when Joan Havens (Diaz) happens to wind up on a nearly empty plane to Kansas City that Roy Miller (Cruise) hijacks, after its crew tries to kill him. Miller is a CIA man, or a former one. He's gone rogue, or so some say. He's also in possession of some kind of inexhaustible energy source MacGuffin thingie created by a brilliant teenager nerd pal of his called Simon Feck (Paul Dano). Naturally everybody wants to get hold of this thingie, and later of young Simon. Sarsgaard is a CIA agent called Fitzgerald who's chasing Roy, and his boss is a black lady called Isabel (Viola Davis). Joan, who rebuilds classic American cars, is on her way to her sister's wedding. The greatest tribute to Roy's skill and a sign of his attention to the human side of things is that he gets her to the wedding, after a few car explosions and chases and dozens of dead bodies. Roy has two main ways of relating to people. He kisses them or he kills them. There isn't time for much else. Cruise carries this off with panache. Diaz is equal to the demands of her role: ditsy -- but glamorous and sexy -- blonde who's also a Charlie's Angel.
When the stuff happens on the plane at the beginning, it's not remotely believable. It isn't meant to be. How believable is any blockbuster action? How believable is anything anywhere? Knight and Day establishes right away (watch how the plane rocks when there's turbulence) that this is a garish, over-the-top comedy. The ridiculous opening sequence clearly establishes that this is an outrageous comedy and a romance as much as it's an actioner. The filmmakers are simply betting that the vivacity of the action and the charm of the stars will get you involved and that involvement will grow rather than diminish as the story progresses. The action is preposterous, but the protagonists are in trouble, so you forget it's silly and start to worry -- but you don't forget to laugh, and you're meant to. The movie manages to ramp up all three aspects and keep the cocktail stirred. This is a shameless effort to appeal simultaneously to three different genre demographics: Comedy, Action, Romance, but it just may succeed.
Is this Ron Miller (Tom Cruise) a man on a crucial mission -- or an out-of-control nut case? This is the question this movie poses, and this is a role that both Cruise's friends and his enemies may find appropriate. . . But to stick with this movie and enjoy its wild action-romance ride, you need to be able to forget any distaste the actor's couch-jumping antics may have awakened and focus on how interesting he has been in films like Magnolia, Tropic Thunder, and Collateral. Cut the guy a break, remember the great movies he has been in, observe how well he and ace comedienne Cameron Diaz work together, and there's entertainment to be had here.
Knight and Day is completely empty and pointless, but also quite a lot of fun. It's too long (like so many of the new pictures), and contains such a rich, indigestible (and expensive) mélange of action stuff -- somersaulting cars exploding on highways, shootouts, chases, fires -- and such lush locations, including Pamplona at bull run time, picturesque Austrian towns, Langley, and the Orient Express, you feel overfed. But then you walk out and it's all, pleasantly, forgotten, except for Tom Cruise's manic smile and Cameron Diaz's look of wide-eyed astonishment, which are enough to take home from a summer blockbuster in a season when one of the NY Times' lead critics praises Jonah Hex and Pixar's strung-out third installment of Toy Story is hailed as a masterpiece.
Empty of solid content though it may be, Knight and Day succeeds, for one thing, because it does something woefully lacking in today's blockbusters -- alternates the heavy action with quiet times. Here, they're usually romantic pauses, in which the lady (Diaz) changes into something more comfortable. Joe Carnahan, who has a sense of humor and knows his way around tough-guy scenes, would have done well to keep this principle in mind when he made The A-Team, a movie that never lets up and consequently leaves you just feeling weary. You remember nothing but Liam Neeson puffing on cigars in a movie he should never have been in. Knight and Day has sense enough to give its leads appropriate roles and keep varying its rhythms so you have a chance to breathe.
In development, this movie went through various titles; the one it landed with, Knight and Day, only makes sense at the end and even then won't hit you over the head with its logic. K & D also went through many writers -- at least nine. Considering that, it's something of a tribute to the director and his cast (which includes the equally excellent Peter Sarsgaard, Paul Dano, and Viola Davis) that the whole thing hangs together as well as it does and the different sequences don't just feel like pieces in a disassembled puzzle.
Tom Cruise's character is invincible and his accidental partner, Joan, tends to get overexcited or lose her ability to cope with the gangs of assassins, the 90-mile-an-hour car chases, and the explosions and Roy resorts to drugging her so he can whisk them both safely away. From being scared and dubious, Joan begins to have more and more confidence in Roy and as this turns to attraction she shows startling abilities of her own: "you've got skills," Roy tells her. Indeed. And however preposterous, so does Knight and Day.
Published on Cinescene. (http://www.cinescene.com/knipp/knightday.htm)