Nothing much to say about Knight and Day except that it’s a fun date film. Mostly a romantic adventure film with some fish-out-of-water comedy and explosives to keep the guys interested it tells the story more from her point of view than his. Her being Cameron Diaz who plays June Havens, a young woman on her way to visit her sister in Boston who is randomly chosen by secret agent Roy Miller, played by Tom Cruise, for what appears to be some sort of amusing cloak and dagger development involving the CIA. Knight is obviously a play on words, as Cruise is the knightly agent supposedly gone rogue but who is always there saving the damsel in distress. For Cruise this film is a smart move because the focus is not entirely on him; he doesn’t come off as a star or a celebrity, no politics, nothing to prove, he’s just a mechanism in the plot to set the girl off on an adventure. And if there’s one thing Cameron Diaz does well it’s play the girl. The girl next door I should say.

The Story: It starts at an airport in Wichita. Cruise’s Miller is the first person on screen, back of his head to the camera; he’s looking for someone, mostly pretty blonde girls rolling their luggage into the airport. When he sees Cameron Diaz’s June he follows and within about thirty minutes he’s getting to know her really well: saving her from the CIA and anyone else who uses the words safe, contained, or secure; from arms dealers and missiles, machine guns and knife wielding spies on trains, planes and in automobiles. June doesn’t know who to trust and the fantasy of adventure with a gentlemanly spy the likes of James Bond turns to fear when she realizes the stunts he pulls are the ways of a crazy man. Mostly she’s yanked from one side to the other with truth unbeknownst to her until she realizes what’s really going on and decides to take matters into her own hands.

The Goods: The music and digital effects help us out as June’s adventures mount from one harrowing experience to another. When Cruise is on screen there’s always a French cafe-like accordion playing but the often clichéd music of romantic scenes, accordions and acoustic guitars, gets a remix from composer John Powell (the Bourne trilogy, Ice Age and Shrek films; How to Train Your Dragon (2010), Face/Off (1997)) who provides the score to Knight and Day. Often times it’s a chill-out, cool club beat that accompanies many of the montage sequences in the film, and particularly over scenes where June is drugged, then dragged, from one Miller escape to another. It’s very fitting with the exotic locations we visit in the film, Jamaica, Austria, Spain, giving us somewhat of a summer vacation vibe in our seats while watching the movie. I mention the effects too, done here by three or four effects houses including Peter Jackson’s Weta that take some of the stunts to the limit, sometimes so close to over-the-top that it’s hard not to be removed by it but it plays well within the Harlequin romance of the film. It’s like Romancing the Stone (1984) on speed, and conjures to mind other films too like Conspiracy Theory (1997) with Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts, or Bird on a Wire (1990) with Gibson and Goldie Hawn; on a few occasions Ms. Diaz is reminiscent of Hawn, getting herself caught in befuddling situations like Hawn did in Foul Play (1978) with bachelor pad aficionado Dudley Moore and co-star secret agent Chevy Chase. At times Knight and Day even reminded me of Get Smart (2008) with Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway and at times like Kate and Leopold (2001) starring Meg Ryan and Hugh Jackman, a James Mangold directed film. Mangold who directed Knight and Day also did the fascinatingly intriguing Identity with John Cusack, one of my favorite films of 2003 in addition to writing and directing 3:10 to Yuma (2007), Walk The Line (2005), Girl, Interrupted (1999) and Cop Land (1997), all decent movies that garnered positive reviews. That’s a rare thing for a director these days, to have a steady string of appealing films, two of which won Oscars for its actors.

The Flaws: There will be no Oscars for Knight and Day, however, but that’s not to say the actors don’t do a good job (check out the tears that form in each of their eyes when relating emotional stories). The actors do well, and the story does well, the visual effects, photography, production value, and stunts are well done…it’s almost as if the film is just sort of well done, not great. Can’t fault it for that really, because for some viewers out there Knight and Day will be one of their favorite movies if not the favorite movie of all time. And though it does sort of fall into the realm of Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest (1959), it lacks a certain personality. Like the film as a whole needs more charm, or more wit. Nothing really happens in the film that makes you say, “wow, that was smart,” or “man that scene was creative.” If anything it might make you say, “damn, that movie was long.” Yes, it takes forty-five minutes to get to the crux of what’s going on. That’s too long. But the running time is less than two hours so go figure. Actually, it’s the only real flaw of the film, that it feels really long and drags out about as much as Diaz’s June gets dragged from one cliffhanger to the next.

The Call: Personally, I say it’s a renter in light of other films currently playing like The A-Team or Toy Story 3. But it’s okay to spend the ten on a date or with the girls on a girl’s night out. Besides, it’s a solid popcorn film from an Oscar winning director while Cruise and Diaz get through action sequences with humorous affect. Cruise even appears to parody his action film persona. And if you like cars, there’s a 66 Pontiac GTO, a 67 Pontiac Grand Prix, a Ducati Hypermotard, and some mean little Brabus modified Smart Cars to set the mood. It’s a good film for summer, light all around—in story, in plot, in mood…mood is the seller here. Romantic music, locals and a bit of adventure. Fellas, that’s all she asks for.

Rated PG-13 for sequences of action violence throughout, and brief strong language.