Knight and Day
Video 
Editorial
It's breathless stuff: no chance of boredom, no space for finesse. Miller and June collide cute at an airport, next thing this charmer has "deactivated" everyone else on the Wichita-Boston red-eye and they're crash-landing in a field. From there, we hop explosively from Boston to The Bronx, the Azores and an Alpine express to find a missing scientist, pursued by the disposable ranks of the US secret service (headed by the smarmy Peter Sarsgaard).
By the second half the laughs fade and it flattens to an 80's thriller, over-enhanced with CG auto-crunch visuals that don't carry the heft of colliding metal. This star-based summer flick is welcome and it's not lacking chemistry. But Diaz, unzipping her magnificent grin, so good at offsetting her beauty with tomboyish steel, gets little reward for pluckiness. Her bullet-point backstory feels like echoes from forgotten drafts. She's just a sparky personality buffeted by the airwaves of endless rewrites. At least Roy's supposed to be a blank invention — Cruise playing Cruise, a bit woodenly.
At heart, it doesn't know what it wants. Zucker-silly spoof on Cruise conventions? A-list driven odd-couple caper? Straight-with-plenty-of-chaser adventure-romance? If anything, it bears closer resemblance to Notting Hill, an ordinary gal hooking up with Cruise, the onscreen fantasy of him that is.
Ian Nathan
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Harry Georgatos
July 15, 2010
This is more a rom.com reworking of Tom's MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE image. It covers entertaining territory with good action set-pieces but has an obvious formula. Tom's box-office clout maybe in doubt with this films poor performance at the North American box-office. If MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE 4 fails to perform then I can see Tom relegated to supporting roles in future films. Today Tom and Cameron can't compete against the TWILIGHT stars!
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