Culture

Directed by James Mangold
Hoyts, Rialto
3.5/5
James Mangold, director of Walk the Line and 3:10 to Yuma, pairs Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise in their second film together since Vanilla Sky. This action comedy sees Diaz playing June Havens, an incredibly girly mechanic who gets thrown in with calm yet crazy spy Roy Miller (Cruise). Throughout this movie you spend more time rolling your eyes than gasping in horror or amazement, but Knight and Day is generally amusing – and not only for the level of absurdity in what may be dubbed typical action movie scenes. There are the car chases on busy motorways, the calm walk away from an expected explosion, the slow-motion run away from a series of unexpected explosions, and the against-all-odds escape despite being completely outnumbered. What is interesting is that Cruise cleverly appears slightly taller than Diaz through most of the movie, even though he clocks in at 5’7”, two inches shorter than her 5’9”. The soundtrack is okay, a mix of somewhat classic action spy music though with an oddly European flavour, similar to that in Ocean’s Twelve. The film does actually end up in Europe, with one of the funnier moments involving an assassin hanging out the window of a train by a string of sausages. Peter Sarsgaard co-stars as his usual creepy self, again playing the good-but-bad-but-is-he-really-good guy. All in all, it’s worth a watch. The tiny wee tropical island in the middle of nowhere is a dream and Diaz’s character gets drugged so much you can only be seriously concerned for her intelligence … because she fell for it that many times.