Knight and Day: Who needs a plot when you have Tom Cruise?

After I left the theater seeing Knight and Day, I suddenly remembered one of the reasons I'm grateful I'm not a celebrity. Sure, they get paid millions of dollars, travel the world, live in gorgeous homes and hang out with beautiful women. But there is a price for that luxury. Every mistake you make, every stupid move you do, follows you around for the rest of your career and you get branded with the same vehemence by the public as if you slaughtered a group of orphans.

Tom Cruise is a perfect example. This is a man who is, for the most part a talented actor. He has played opposite some of cinema's best (Robert Duvall, Paul Newman, Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson) and has held his own. He knows how to carry a film and make his characters likeable (Risky Business, Born on the Fourth of July, A Few Good Men) or unlikeable (Tropic Thunder, Collateral) as needed. But what has been the crime that has made the public turn against him? Jumping up and down on a couch on Oprah and arguing with Matt Lauer on The Today Show. It makes me grateful that my career isn't judged by rants I've gone on or idiotic behavior I may have done or else I would be looking for the nearest refrigerator box to live in.

Those thoughts occurred to me after the movie because Cruise is easily the best thing about the otherwise completely disposable Knight and Day. In the movie (which makes less and less sense the more I thought about it), he plays a former secret agent who runs into Cameron Diaz at an airport. After a flight where he literally kills everyone other than Diaz (who somehow doesn't think it's strange that only about 1/2 dozen are on a flight that she was almost bumped from because it was "full"), he forces Diaz to go on the run with him as they cross numerous contenents while in the possession of a battery that never runs out of juice (which is shoved into a toy knight, hence one half of the title).

The plot never makes any lick of sense and has the least convincing ending of any film I have ever seen. After seeing the movie, a friend of mine asked me "Those people who were pursuing Cruise at the end -- were they good or bad guys?" It says a lot where, after thinking about it, I honestly had no idea. It's one thing to be confused by a David Lynch movie (I basically expect to be sitting there having no clue why there's a backwards talking dwarf on the screen) but with a summer action blockbuster, the plot should be a tad clearer and easier than follow than a governmental housing code (and more interesting too).

That's not to say that the movie didn't have possibilities. Cruise, as I mentioned at the beginning is quite good. He plays the character as an agent who is so bored by the proceedings that he has time to be completely polite to everyone (including a fireman whom he has just shot in the leg). That dichotomy to the insane proceedings does provide for more than a few laughs. Unfortunately, most of the film's best jokes are in the trailer so there's no major reason to go see the movie.

In the end, the movie is completely forgettable and another sign that this is definately not the best of summers. But, unlike others, I don't lay the blame for this at Cruise's feet. The man tried. Hopefully, next time he'll be given a project that will make us forgive him for the infamous crime of being excited while on a talk show and for stating an opinion he strongly believes in. Those are harsh acts to overcome but someday he will find a way to repent for the crime of being human.

Grade: C-