Knight and Day

It’s all boom, bang, and zoom, and a middle-aged Barbie and a middle-aged Ken are all mwah, mwah. And all this happens quite stylishly, in 90s trappings and with the excellent idea of watching everything from June's point of view and not Roy's. It's just a shame about the great imbalance between the scenes and about Cruise. It’s not that he's not bad, but Ben Stiller would have been better for the role. (07/08/2010)

Knight and Day could have been a hit in the 1990s, but today this movie feels like something of which Mr. & Mrs. Smith is a fresh remake (and not just because the main couple has sex in it). James Mangold manages the dynamics and action well and knows how to work with actors, but he is too old-fashioned for this genre. (14/07/2010)

Wonderful nonsense. As if you would get onto a plane and fly back to the nineties where a car blows up when you shoot it in the gas tank, tough guys are quick with snappy lines and scantily clad blondes wink at you with dry Martinis in their hands. Tom Cruise doesn’t age, looks the same and is doing the same crazy things as he was twenty years ago. Mangold handles the directing pretty well (it has that pleasant old-school feeling that it should), but the too obviously digital effects spoil the overall effect. Sometimes I think that it’s a shame that Greengrass didn’t get his hands on this. And John Powell is a guarantee of good music. A pleasant time-out. (18/10/2010)

A perfect echo of the 1990s and the definition of a "summer film." The plot is from the ranks of primitive, overdone action scenes and most importantly a functioning central duo. Cruise plays himself, so he’s entertaining in the right way in the light-hearted atmosphere, and Diaz proves that playing a naive whiny blonde is not all that easy. It's too bad that it’s so predictable, or the feeling you get that the film won't surprise you with anything. This is John Powell's best music since The Bourne Ultimatum. 3 ½. (22/09/2010)

You want to compare it to Mr. & Mrs. Smith? OKAY. But Angelina and Brad's film is better, and by a lot. Anyway, back to Knight and Day. Tom C. and Cameron D. are undoubtedly a stellar duo, but they needed a much more charged script with better jokes and action scenes that are at least as good as driving a car with a dead man behind the wheel. Basically, it was pretty boring... Plus, Cameron Diaz never struck me as a particularly pretty woman, which I freely admit. Two and a half stars rounded down for disappointment and it’s time to get away from this film. Mangold - and not only Mangold - can do better. (10/09/2010)