Knight and Day (2010)

Tom Cruise has, for a while, been a divisive figure at the box office. Once arguably the biggest star in the world, some questionable film choices along with the rabid interest in his personal life has lowered his profile somewhat. Knight and Day is his latest effort to recapture some of what made him so popular in the first place, a breezy romp of an action film in which Cruise gets to look cool and save the world.
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Director James Mangold, who helmed the pretty decent remake of 3:10 To Yuma, provides the film with a much lighter tone than similar action fare, the film is flat our ridiculous and knows it, the film kicks off with an improvised plane landing and only gets stranger. Cameron Diaz plays June, an ordinary mechanic (just go with it) whose rather mundane life is shattered when she comes into contact with Roy Miller (Cruise) a secret agent on the run. Cue plenty of car chases, doubles crosses and plot shenanigans right out of the James Bond playbook. Both Cruise and Diaz give it their best, Cruise's slightly manic charisma and energy is here in full effect and he makes Miller a suitably unhinged force of nature. Diaz fares less well, she hardly convinces as a boring, ordinary girl, but she has an easy chemistry with Cruise and her goofy charms serve the tone of the film well.
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Peter Sarsgaard, Paul Dano (sporting a hilarious beard) and Maggie Grace all provide support, but the film largely keeps them on the periphery, focusing instead on the two main stars. However the film's main issue is that it just isn't that memorable, there are few stand out scenes or creative set-pieces. It is entertaining enough to sit through, but there is little here that doesn't stick to well tested formulas. It seems to be common for these buddy action films of recent years to all fall into these same patterns, familiar yet ultimately forgettable. Once again there is no really memorably threat or adversary for them to team up against, and the outlandish nature of the stunts and situations can work against the film, lowering the stakes and removing any sense of realism.
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Knight and Day clearly wants to be a painless and enjoyably silly riff on the secret agent action movie, and to some extent it succeeds, it's just a shame that at times it feels more like a vanity outlet for its stars than a film with anything new or interesting to add to the genre.