Tom Cruise has let me down. After 18 years of starring in high quality entertainment, starting with 1992's A Few Good Men, Cruise hasn't made a stinker. Better than that, he hasn't even made an average film; a claim that even extends to his cameos in Goldmember and Tropic Thunder. Not since the summer of 1992, when Ron Howard's misfire Far and Away hit our screens, has the megastar headlined something that was simply 'OK'. But he's broken that impressive run with Knight and Day, a comedic, romantic spy thriller.
The main problem lies with a script that simply isn't good enough. It's clearly a character piece, having fun between Cruise's spy Roy Miller, a man who may or may not be a mentally unstable rogue agent and June, a simple girl-next-door type with whom his life gets entwined. But in an effort to keep things light and fluffy their relationship isn't explored with any degree of depth. Director, James Mangold (who's a dab hand at character stuff in Copland, Girl Interrupted, 3:10 To Yuma) has wisely set enough screen time for these characters to interact between bombastic set pieces, but the film rarely sparks during these character moments. To be fair Cruise and Diaz aren't at fault, utilising their wonderfully charismatic screen persona's to full capacity; Cruise grinning and cocky...Diaz bubbly and ditsy.
When the characters aren't talking then they're on the run, away from tragically ineffectual villain Peter Sarsgaard, dodging explosions and bullets either on trains, planes and automobiles. The problems in these scenes are the wealth of crap CGI effects which mostly hover obviously in the background of shots as rear projections of the film's locations. If you've seen Bond films between 1961 and 1989 you'll know this was a common technical problem, that was mostly eliminated with the use of blue screen technology. Not so here as the poor effects distract from all the major action sequences whether it's with CGI bulls or fake, inserted explosions.
What does work? Well John Powell's score is different enough, utilising a French vibe, to make it stand apart from his derivative Bourne soundtracks. The production is old school and sumptuous, using it's globe trotting locations better than most films today (yes, even better captured on film than Inception, I'd say). And the action sequences, when not ruined by CGI, are extremely well staged, with dazzling stunt work (the single shot of Cruise landing on a SUV's hood is particularly memorable.)
But the action, comedy and drama are all compromised. None of it has any edge...the comedy not that funny (the running gag of Diaz being repeatedly drugged doesn't work at all), the action impressive but not that exciting and the drama shallow and obvious, taking the audience nowhere they didn't predict when the film started.
This being produced by Twentieth Century Fox, it could be that Cruise and Mangold were shat on, causing the watered down fluff that Knight & Day unfortunately is.
But it might also be that Cruise and Mangold might have had enough studio independence to mess up their movie, all by themselves...they certainly have the combined clout. With Fox's poor reputation, it could very well be the former, but only time will tell. One could have accused Fox's meddling as the cause of the disaster that is Shyamalan's The Happening in 2008. Reviews for The Last Airbender, which are poor at best, seem to suggest that it was Shyamalan, not Fox, that has weak artistic judgement. In a similar vein, it could very well prove to be that Cruise and Mangold's quality control is on the blink. Pray it gets fixed.
No comments:
Post a Comment