First, a clarification regarding the title of the newly released
action-comedy Knight and Day: "Knight" refers either to a) the
long-abandoned family name of one of the two principal characters, a
glamorous superspy played by Tom Cruise who, for all narrative and
promotional purposes, now goes by the name "Roy Miller"; or b) a small
toy paladin in which a Secret Device that Could Change the World is
briefly hidden. And "Day"? One might imagine that it refers to the
spunky everygal played by costar Cameron Diaz. One would be wrong. (Her
character's name is "June Havens.") In fact, it doesn't refer to
anything at all; the word's sole purpose is to balance the
already-a-stretch "Knight." I mean honestly. If we had to go down this
path at all, why not A Knight to Remember, or Knight Moves? The
titillating PG-13 innuendo of A Knight in June? Or, with appropriate
legal representation on call, Darkest Knight? But no, for no discernable
reason outside the preferences of some anonymous focus group, we're
given Knight and Day, Cole Porter be damned.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Knight and Day overview
The pretext for all the thunderous comings and goings in "Knight and Day" is a small battery, hardly larger than a D-cell, that the hero must keep out of the hands of various bad guys. It is not, we are told, "your average Duracell," but "the first perpetual energy source since the sun." The source of this movie's energy is near-perpetual desperation. You can see it in Tom Cruise's fixed grin, and in the mad proliferation of unspecial effects. You can feel it in the feverish pace, and in the stuttering style of an action adventure that wants to be seen as a gleeful send-up of "Mission Impossible," yet mires its star in hapless self-parody.
For years now, summer movies have been wearing their audiences down. With the spectacular exception of "Toy Story 3," this summer's studio releases have been so dispiriting that even critics who know better are blunting their barbs and giving trash a pass as harmless entertainment. I've done that too, on occasion; being a serial spoilsport isn't a lot of fun. Far from wearing me down, though, "Knight and Day" woke me up to just how awful some summer entertainments have become. It isn't that the film is harmful, except to moviegoers' wallets and movie lovers' morale, but that it is truly phenomenal for the purity of its incoherence.
The starting point of the story is a chance encounter between Mr. Cruise's Roy Miller, a secret agent on a mission more dangerous than he knows, and Cameron Diaz's June Havens, who restores old cars for a living. The starting point of the writers—there must have been a bunch, though Patrick O'Neill gets sole writer credit—was Hitchcock's "North by Northwest" with the genders reversed: June is the innocent, originally played by Cary Grant, who gets caught up in a succession of incomprehensible events. (Within the limits of the enterprise, Ms. Diaz manages to be likable, though the movie finally presses her into awfully foolish action-heroine service in the dubious tradition of "Mr. & Mrs. Smith.") But what was mysterious in the Hitchcock film is gibberish in this one, which was directed by James Mangold.
At least some of it was directed by Mr. Mangold. Much of it is the consequence of what I've come to think of as digital delirium, a state of being that prompts studios with deep pockets and shallow perspectives to believe that because something can be done digitally it should be done.
Almost anything can be done with these new techniques, and "Knight and Day" is here to prove it—an airliner's crash landing, which is absolutely devoid of any drama; an airborne motorcycle; a running of Pamplona's bulls; a relentless succession of ritual explosions, and a series of chases that fill the sky with a galaxy of spinning cars. These effects are familiar, of course, but no longer amusingly so, as they were in the digital era's early days. Now they're snorefully boring and cumulatively deadening because they owe no allegiance to the laws of physics, let alone to the dictates of effective drama. As big-budget special effects grow ever more ungrounded, the movies that rely on them are coming unmoored.
Knight and Day review
First, a clarification regarding the title of the newly released action-comedy Knight and Day: "Knight" refers either to a) the long-abandoned family name of one of the two principal characters, a glamorous superspy played by Tom Cruise who, for all narrative and promotional purposes, now goes by the name "Roy Miller"; or b) a small toy paladin in which a Secret Device that Could Change the World is briefly hidden. And "Day"? One might imagine that it refers to the spunky everygal played by costar Cameron Diaz. One would be wrong. (Her character's name is "June Havens.") In fact, it doesn't refer to anything at all; the word's sole purpose is to balance the already-a-stretch "Knight." I mean honestly. If we had to go down this path at all, why not A Knight to Remember, or Knight Moves? The titillating PG-13 innuendo of A Knight in June? Or, with appropriate legal representation on call, Darkest Knight? But no, for no discernable reason outside the preferences of some anonymous focus group, we're given Knight and Day, Cole Porter be damned.
A film that treats its own title so, ahem, cavalierly can hardly be expected to be diligent when it comes to such niceties as plot, character, and pacing--but Knight and Day exceeds even such anti-expectations. It is woefully scattered, alternatingly slack and frenetic, and transcendently preposterous. Remarkably, it is also, for a time, reasonably diverting for anyone willing to jettison everything they know about love, espionage, and narrative cohesion.
The tale begins at the Wichita airport, where we meet June and learn exactly two things about her: first, that she restores vintage muscle cars (so males in the audience will find her irresistible); and second, that she has a bad case of little-sister-getting-married-before-her (so females in the audience will find her sympathetic). On her way through security, June repeatedly runs into Roy, himself a fetching grin sandwiched between windbreaker and sunglasses. June is bumped from her flight but is subsequently put back on it, only to discover there are just a handful of passengers on the plane, Roy included. (The reasons for June's bumping and de-bumping are obscure, an early sign that the screenplay--credited to newcomer Patrick O'Neill, but subsequently rewritten by half a dozen others--will not infrequently be divided against itself.) June and Roy flirt lightly until she visits the lavatory, at which point the other passengers, along with both pilots and the navigator, all try to assassinate Roy. Happily, he is much better at this kind of thing than they are, so he kills them instead, crash lands the jet himself, warns June about the nameless baddies who will soon come looking, and gently drugs her. She wakes the next morning in her own bed, with friendly Roy-notes offering life-saving advice scattered around her apartment.
To describe such plotting as ridiculous might sprain the term itself. Yet, for those of generous spirit and easily suspended disbelief (you may wish to re-read the previous paragraph before deciding whether you qualify), the first few reels of Knight and Day offer a kind of giddy, kinetic nonsense. Cruise, still eager to erase his image as self-serious Scientologist and overplayed inamorata, punctures his longstanding action persona with sly wit and self-effacing charm. (Where has this fellow been since Risky Business?) And Diaz gets more mileage than one would imagine from her otherwise exhausted role as the bubbly-but-tough innocent bystander/eventual love interest. The two are even supplied with a handful of moderately inspired gags, the best of which doubles as an ingenious way to cut down on the studio costs of a big aerial escape scene. As backup, Peter Sarsgaard, Viola Davis, and Paul Dano offer above-average spins on the Scheming Turncoat, the Hardnosed Spymaster, and the Good-Natured Geek, respectively.
But in the end--or, rather, by the midpoint--it's not enough. Over time, the script's internal confusions become too vivid to ignore. (In particular, a subplot in which Roy, ostensibly for June's safety, contrives to have her captured by the very people he has claimed want her dead, achieves a level of logic-melting idiocy.) Worse, nearly every half-memorable joke in the film is told a second time, and in some cases a third--a textbook demonstration that recycling is not always a virtue. By the finale, it's hard to shake the sense that the movie has already expired, and everyone involved--Cruise, Diaz, director James Mangold, the battalion of screenwriters--are just trying to prop it up, Weekend at Bernie's-style, long enough to heave it over the 100-minute mark.
What is perhaps most dispiriting about Knight and Day is what it suggests about Hollywood and the comedy-thriller-romance subgenre, a hybrid once responsible for such ineffable delights as Charade and To Catch a Thief. Last year's marquee attempt, Tony Gilroy's Duplicity, boasted the requisite intelligence but lacked the enlivening ebullience. Knight and Day, by contrast, fails more typically. Nimble enough on its feet when cars are crashing and bullets whizzing--Cruise and Diaz's best scenes almost all take advantage of the incongruity of conversation at such moments--it has no idea at all what a man and woman might talk about when deprived of such violent backdrops. When the action slows, the dialogue, which ought to pick up pace, stalls as well. ("Fitz set me up.... That's when I met you," he tells her; "Who are you, really?" she asks him.)
Like 2005's Mr. and Mrs. Smith, another film that began with the promise of romantic chemistry before veering onto the easier (and more lucrative) terrain of body-count, Knight and Day is vastly more at ease with the bang-bang than the kiss-kiss, let alone any talk-talk. Relatively early in the proceedings, June begs of Roy, "Please stop shooting people, okay? Just stop shooting people." It's a plea viewers may share--one that, inevitably, goes unheeded.
Knight and Day movie cast and crew
Directed by
James Mangold
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Tom Cruise
Cameron Diaz
Peter Sarsgaard
Jordi Mollà
Viola Davis
Paul Dano
Falk Hentschel
Marc Blucas
Lennie Loftin
Maggie Grace
Rich Manley
Dale Dye
Celia Weston
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