Knight and Day (2010)

Knight and Day" is a comfort food movie. It's a pleasant diversion, a fun time at the cinema that doesn't ask a lot of of it's audience and offers an enjoyable ride. We've seen it all before, but it worked pretty well then, and it works pretty well now.

June Havens (Cameron Diaz) is an average perky blonde romantic comedy heroine who runs into the charming and mysterious Roy Miller (Tom Cruise) at the airport, and is sucked into a series of misadventures when Roy turns out to be a secret agent fighting rogue elements in his own agency . . . or maybe HE's the rogue agent . . . It depends on who she listens to. there's a mysterious device called the Zephyr that Roy is either protecting or trying to steal. All of this is fairly predictable, and, again, nothing new. But director James Mangold ("Copland", "Walk the Line", "3:10 to Yuma") always knows how to make a film play, and his skills haven't deserted him here. His pacing is brisk and fun, and he stages some terrific action (including one sequence from Diaz' point of view that did feel genuinely new).

Of course, this is a star vehicle, and whether you enjoy it will depend a lot on how you feel about Tom Cruise. Dismissing his personal life as utterly irrelevant, I find him to be a solid and dependable actor who does action better than almost anyone in Hollywood. And, here, he gets a rare chance to flex his comic muscles, and hie's quite funny (though too much of the best material is in the trailer). Diaz is pleasant, but tries a little too hard to be cute. And, occasionally, the film itself has the same problem.

But, overall, it's a funny little spy movie. part adventure, part romcom. Not destined for any Ten Best Lists, but enjoyable summer entertainment.