Knight. And. Day. Knight and Day. KnightandDay. Seriously. Seriously? Seriously.
Studio, who thought this was a good idea? What person went Oh! we should change the title and a (so I'm told) great script into a meh script and a terrible title. The films original title was Wichita, an early locale of the film.
Okay so onto the movie itself. Let us start with what works shall we? Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise Tom Cruise. He is brilliant in this. This is partially the script, but the stuff that is clearly Cruise is good. It works. It's Tom on his way to a new point in his career.
So this movie is simple, its Tom Cruise playing Ethan Hunt, but crazy,except not. Or is he?! No he's not. the movie spends maybe five minutes trying to convince you this might be the case and then people start shooting at him and your like oh, he's not just a crazy guy going on the grid. Later you find out the film is Ethan Hunt is trying to protect this kid and this battery he made(yep, you read that right), but really the plot is Ethan Hunt and Cameron Diaz jet setting, he occasionally drugs her and changes her clothes while such in what might have been almost implied rape. The film works best when it doesn't take itself seriously, which is why it falls apart in the third act. and the second half of the first act. and some of the action sequences. You see there are really funny and smart lines like when Tom is taking Cameron out of a restaurant and trying to get anyone hurt so he holds her hostage. Yeah I know, convolution is the name of the game here. But just as he leaves he says something to the effect of "No body move, or I shoot myself then her!". And it is this hilarious moment. There is almost a moment in that same scene involving Riley Finn(or whatever the actor who played him on Buffy's name is) giving a thumbs up that is Awesome. Now onto why this movie fails horribly. It is clearly a Tom Cruise vehicle. The movie should have been about him. But it isn't. It is about Cameron Diaz's whiny character. She is a stupid blonde who we are supposed to believe builds cars(Ha!) from the opening sequence where she brings car parts in her carry on(yeah we totally believe you can bring large pieces of metal in a suitcase that big as a carry-on. Totally.) but it never does anything to make us BELIEVE this to be true. We see Cameron Diaz being this Damsel and then about 3/4 the way through the movie is like and now she thinks shes a bad ass(emphasis on thinks and the movie makes fun of her for it). But it all falls flat. And it doesn't ring true for the character and the change is so abrupt that he don't see the change. The next issue is that in the aforementioned drugging, often it is done durring what would have been the cool part of the action sequences but the writer couldn't think of anyway to keep the scenes going so he just ended them. Which is good, but instead of ending the scenes, he cuts you out of them with a deus Ex Machina. This should have been an amazing action/comedy. But because it skips the action scenes, it can't be an action movie. Because only half of the comedy works it doesn't stand up as a comedy. Because it isn't a romance movie and all the romance scenes seem more forced than Anakin and Padme, it doesn't work. This movie does not know what it wants to be and instead falls apart. There are some good things going on in it, and if you want to see Tom Cruise being awesome check it out.
But ultimately the point is that the film has a terrible ending(except one moment where you can see that there WAS something smart to this at some point.) The movie is polarizing. Trying to be action/comedy/romance. But at the same time trying to be a parody. SO I can't in good conscious give this movie more than a C+.
Oh and you may be wondering why I keep repeating things three times. Well it is because in film there is a rule of three for information. You hint, you show, you explain. This film just hits you with the same crappy jokes three times. And the joke wasn't even funny to begin with.
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