— by TOM ELCE —
With the lousy “Identity,” director James Mangold suggested a gift (quite accidentally) for the preposterous, and so it’s no surprise that his forthcoming film “Knight and Day,” an action-comedy that immediately looks preferable to films like “Get Smart,” would appear — if we are to judge by trailers — well-suited to him. If two minutes and 29 seconds were ever enough to get an impression on the whole product, a marriage of director and content has scarcely looked so natural.
Starring Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise as a fugitive couple whose increasingly dangerous exploits are aimed at getting an audience’s pulse rating and guts busting, “Knight and Day” should give Diaz a chance to put the miserable histrionics of “My Sister’s Keeper” behind her and Cruise a chance to prove he didn’t lose his sense of humour after “Vanilla Sky.” For their part, it’s clear they’re having fun in their roles.
Also featuring on the cast list are a host of recognisable faces, from Peter Sarsgaard to Maggie Grace to Paul Dano to some guy named Jerrel Lee. The trailer itself’s a whole parade of alternately pretty and handsome faces, some of whom hopefully get the chance to trot out one-liners of their own while Cruise makes comic observations atop a speeding vehicle.
I don’t expect this to greatly surpass the expectations of dizzyingly light action-comedy, but Mangold’s new film certainly looks to be a stronger brand of fun than anything Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich has ever imagined, long-inactive actor Patrick O’Neill turning out a screenplay that we can safely assume puts emphasis on the outlandish over the profound.
If “Knight and Day” isn’t ever going to be a memorably deep studio film, let’s at least hope it can get the basics of its chosen genre right — that it winds up being better than a movie that credits an actress named Stream oughta deserve to be.
Appropriately for an action-comedy, “Knight & Day” opens next summer, July 2.
Source: Trailer Addict
Follow Tom Elce on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tom_elce.
I don’t like Cameron Diaz all that much, but this film I think shows some promise and could be pretty good.
Damn, I forgot that Diaz was also in “Vanilla Sky” for this article. She got one of the movie’s few great lines, too.
Personally, I’d say she’s underrated, but she has starred in a lot of garbage (“Very Bad Things,” “My Sister’s Keeper,” “Shrek the Third”).
I’ll tell ya, I think Cruise has real comedic chops that he’s rarely called on to use. Diaz can be very good when the material is great, so I’m looking for her to mostly react to situations more than create them. If the one-liners and the action are at the same pace, I think this could be a very enjoyable movie, an action comedy romance a la “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.”
I think this looks great.