Knight and Day
You know who you are. You love movies, or at least you used to, but you’ve been avoiding them this summer because everything on the marquee looks like the shoddy remake of a sequel to a video game. I can’t say “Knight and Day” will enthrall the discerning moviegoers who’ve sent the box office into a well-deserved slump, but it should placate them. At least it did for me. The versatile director James Mangold relies on an endangered formula: A-list stars, glamorous locations, action, humor and romance. “Knight and Day” knowingly takes place in a fantasy version of the real world, where feats of derring-do are tossed off blithely, recognizable in their aftermath only because the hair of Tom Cruise or Cameron Diaz is slightly tousled. Cruise again puts his feral energy in service of comedy, satirizing the super-competent Ethan Hunt of his “Mission: Impossible” series. Diaz is less ideally cast. Her persona in material like this is bubbly-flighty-ditzy-clumsy, and she does it well. But it doesn’t jell with her character’s occupation, restoring vintage cars, or with her surprising acumen in the world of high-stakes espionage. Mangold packs every scene with delirious action and banter, and it’s charming, especially for the first hour or so. But just when the movie should be serving up its most memorable delights, it falls into a rut, repeating setups, transitions and barely-literate catchphrases, like Cruise reacting to desperate situations with three words: “I got this.” “Knight and Day” is similarly enamored of its own sleek competence. It seduces itself when it should still be seducing the audience.