I picked up this movie cheap , I didn’t expect much but I usually like movies with Tom Cruise (yes, I admit it) and Cameron Diaz is always likable I thought it would be worth a watch. And it pretty much was what I expected, a couple of hours of action, explosions, car chases and tongue in cheek humour.
However throughout the movie I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing something, like the whole thing was one of those private jokes people share at a party but you aren’t privy to.
As the movie went on I thought the big reveal was that the events of the story were a fantasy Cameron Diaz’s character had concocted to entertain herself but that never happened.
Lets look at the facts, a bored and frustrated woman literally bumps into a tall, dark, somewhat mysterious and dangerous stranger. He is a literal Knight and he sweeps her off into a hair-raising action-packed barely logical adventure to exotic locations around the world. Naive and ineffective at the start she becomes competent, confident and deadly herself by the end of the story.
The stunts were even more improbable and unlikely than the usual Hollywood fair and there were some outright bizarre and dreamlike elements (an exotic island shaped like Pacman, a deadly assassin pulling himself to safety on a string of sausages, a nerdy scientist with a world-changing invention…really?)
Yes, I do realise I’m over-analysing whats supposed to be nothing more than a standard Hollywood blockbuster but there you go, I found the whole thing entertaining but vaguely unsatisfactory, as if I was missing something obvious.
But Cameron Diaz’s character was named June Havens. And Cruises was named Roy Miller. So event the title makes about as much any sense as the original title “Wichita and Trouble Man.”
They overused the “unconscious while a whole bunch of plot continues on” bit and that made for a very strangely paced movie, which I think contributes to the feeling.
Well with the Magic of Hollywood he did appear at least regular sized…
I did think that he was getting a bit old looking to be playing these sort of action film roles though.
Well they do kind of shoe-horn in an explanation for the knight part Roy Miller is not Cruises’ characters original name, his surname was Knight and he does have a ‘Knight in Shining Armour’ motif going on.
No idea where ‘Day’ is connected to Diaz’s character though.
I kind of liked that aspect but it did add to the whole ‘dreamlike’ ambience of the thing.
I found the chirpy and cheerful music during many of the action scenes distracting as well.
I think it might be that it’s just a super cookie-cutter movie that most fanfiction writers could have outwritten. I sat through a lot of that movie with my eyes closed and never felt like I was missing out on the “plot”.
So there is no real twist to the story? Because I remember when it came out, the reviews all seemed to hint at “something more going on” and yeah, I assumed some kind of dream twist or Cameron Diaz is an amnesia assassin twist.
I like this movie a lot. I think Tom Cruise was pitch perfect in this role. He played the comedic aspects just right, and of course he has the intensity to make the action scenes play well. I know a lot of people dismiss anything Cruise does because of his personal life, but I can’t help but like his character here.
As for the “quirkiness” of the movie–they were definitely not going for realism. They didn’t go as far over-the-top as, say, Shoot 'Em Up or Crank, but they were surely going for some spoofing of the action genre. The fact that they didn’t throw that in your face (like the movies mentioned above, and The Last Action Hero) makes me like it even more.
I saw it in the movie theater and thought the movie was stupid, summer blockbuster fun. Worth the bucket of popcorn and a few hours in a theater.
Sure it was over-the-top, but aren’t all action films to some degree?
Yes, I think Tom Cruise is a closeted nutjob, but he does well in these types of films.
As far as getting too old for them? Not yet. There are far older actors still getting away with starring in action films and doing just fine.
My wife loves this movie. It was a spoof of action movies, so Cruise was making fun of his own action stuff. I thought the spoof was well done, a little subtle apparently. Once it dawned on me that it was poking fun at the genre the movie made a lot more sense.
I thought the movie sucked because the story was nothing but one gigantic trope. And a sexist one at that. 2 hours of ditzy, incompetent, eye-candyish female being saved over and over again by a man who is amazingly handsome, badass and mysterious. Oooh, ain’t never see that one before.
It’s like the producers were trying to make a film that appealed both to women’s white knight fantasies and to men’s desire to be Tom Cruise. So we can guess where the “knight” part of the title comes from. If it was intended to make fun of itself, I think it failed. Because it wasn’t funny enough.
Only reason I liked it was that I was in the Worcester Airport terminal the day after they wrapped up shooting, and still had the fake airline signs up.