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Feature

While on a flight June Havens (Cameron Diaz) meets Roy Miller (Tom Cruise), but this ain’t no ordinary first meet because Roy is a fugitive super spy. Now June is caught up in the high octane, bullets flying, action packed chase to hunt down Roy, and with all of this madcap hi-jinks going on these two strangers are on soon on course to fall in love. Y’know, because that always happens.


On Knight and Day’s initial announcement I was pretty happy with the Cruise/Diaz combination. I always liked their brief but dramatic pairing in Vanilla Sky (Blu-ray soon please) and the idea of Ethan Hunt meeting up with the fun loving Charlie’s Angel in an all-out action romantic comedy certainly seemed like it would be a good idea.

Unfortunately Knight and Day isn’t the romantic caper movie I hoped it would be. I wanted a Bird on a Wire type adventure, but instead Knight and Day just becomes a series of pretty typical set pieces, some pretty effective Tom Cruise gags (most of which are in the trailer anyways) and not a lot else as the screenplay is riddled with clichés and just feels so drab.

If it wasn’t for the enjoyable leads—I’m really liking this slightly more laid back Cruise era and Diaz only has to flash that goofy smile once and in a while and everything gets a little more fun— Knight and Day would have lost me long before its overlong run time ground my interest to a halt. I found this caper to be overloaded with elements I didn’t care about, big action that I didn’t feel any connection to and too many moments where the story skips over details (usually achieved by drugging Diaz) for the sake of having another butting of heads from the two stars. The biggest stumbling block however is that at its heart, Knight and Day has two characters I’d seen far too many times before to find anything fresh to enjoy.

Video

The standard definition transfer has a nice array of colours. Lots of reds and warm oranges, Diaz’s blue eyes as always pop off the screen and the entire movie is quite a glossy bright affair. The image isn’t particularly sharp and doesn’t look all that natural because of the beefed up colours, but for the junk food nature of the genre, everything looks as you’d expect without doing anything to show off (especially in the special effects department, which mostly look terribly fake).

Audio

As the story is loaded with the forced intrigue of “what’s going on here exactly?”, the soundtrack is never all that quiet with either a slow ticking in the score to make you consider thinking about the events unfolding or big all-out action pieces full of gun fire, explosions and car smashes and crashes, all of which play well in the rear speakers.

Dialogue is solid in the front speakers and the pop choices sound good in the track too. Sound effects also play a full range of tricks, from scattering bullet shells to Diaz hearing Cruise walk along the top of the bus, which sounded brilliant. All in all the best thing about Knight and Day is audio track, which really brings the film alive (it’s just a shame the visuals didn’t follow suite).

Extras

Well with no actual features and the most boring menu ever, access to a digital copy on the disc is all you get, so enjoy carrying this one around on your portable device and not much else.

Overall

Knight and Day played better on this my second viewing, mainly due to the fact I could zone out of the weak boring plot and just sit back and enjoy the performances, which really do have moments that shine. Outside of that however, Knight and Day is a drab affair that's seems to have it all but doesn't really know how to get all the elements together effectively.

The disc is pretty good in the A/V department but with all the features seemingly only on the Blu-ray, the DVD is a bit of a let-down.