Knight & Day (Today)!

The commercials are on every channel, and it seems as though the actors are too! Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz have been going full-out on the publicity for their summer blockbuster. From The Today Show in the morning to The Daily Show at night, the two are covering almost as much ground as they did while filming the movie!

So yes, it's here, our Boston Blockbuster! And so is my take on the flick, without any real spoilers. The first 40 minute chunk of the movie was beautiful Boston. Seeing landmarks in the background, remembering the buzz when they were in town filming last year, and of course the action! The Boston part of the movie for me was obviously the best, but it really felt like a let down when they moved to Europe. Everything was moving so fast, and the character development was flowing and then poof, we're in Europe and I'm still not really sure what the movie's about.

The style was pretty good, fitting well with the strengths of both Diaz and Cruise; her smarter than the average blond routine and his action-hero with a smirk really meshed. And the two had some pretty funny jokes, one-liners, silent pauses that came from the chemistry. But the movie seemed like it wanted to go in either of three directions... action movie, comedy movie with action, or action movie spoof. And instead of picking one and doing it great, they kinda picked all three and it was dull, average even. Maybe if they had went for the R-rating and left some humorous curses in the flick it would have sat better with me. But once seeing it was going to be rated PG-13, its like you're just waiting for the one F-bomb they get to drop. Diaz got it.

I did a little ruminating on Knight & Day, and I think I know the movie it most reminds me of... Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. The trekkies who see Knight & Day will back me up on this. There's a crazy new technology/power source device and it ends up not being so stable. The bad guys stopping at nothing, hell-bent on harnessing it's power. So played... And of course with it being a Tom Cruise movie, there's always some sort of mole-hunt or shady mentor of his generally adding a not-so-hidden twist later in the film.

So, as far as where it ranks among our favorite Boston movies, I really think it showed a lot of our city. The best stunts in the movie were the Boston ones. And more or less, including the total package of the movie stars filming here so much and production going so smoothly, it was a pretty enjoyable effort. So on our Boston scale, I'm giving Knight & Day a 8.5/10.

As for the movie itself, only 6/10.