Friday 3 September 2010

Does shiny and famous still make money?

It seemed that not enough people wanted to watch Knight and Day in the US, despite it 'starring' Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. Or maybe because it has Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz in it. Perhaps the idea of seeing famous people on screen has become less exciting than a big 3D-fest, franchise, or simply good films.The advertising for Knight and Day is just saying 'Look, shiny famous faces. We don't care if they're insane and/or boring'. So it's a good thing that it failed to make a billion dollars? It's definitely a slap in the (not so shiny) face for some suited studio people, but under all this is a film that's not bad. The absence of a negative. You won't remember it the next day, but never mind. Tom Cruise is a US agent gone mad and on the run from everyone. He's funny too, casually and amiably shooting everything while trying to keep Cameron Diaz calm. The expensive car chases and helicopter fights are no bother at all. He's definitely the best thing here, even if everyone seems to forget about the comedy halfway through. It starts to become a standard action film and everyone puts on their serious faces. Still ridiculous, just not funny. A shame, but it's still done well.

In some ways it's flimsy. Every now and then Cameron Diaz's character is drugged or knocked out, making the screen go black and fade into a new exotic location. A series of set-pieces with no link, like levels in a game. A lot of action films travel rapidly travel around locations, but not usually so shamelessly. Doesn't really matter though, in much the same way as you ignore Diaz's habit of talking out loud when she's deducing things. It'll do.

4 comments:

  1. Quite. Not a bad film - just not a great one. I enjoyed it.

    Just found the repeated drugging of the female lead to be ... odd.

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  2. I liked this movie. As far as action movies went and have been going, this one is actually, gasp, well made! And it is funny too. It's sad that people now judge movies based on the tabloid exploits of their stars. Tom Cruise is still the same star he was in the 80s and 90s and is just as enjoyable here as ever. Too bad, if we need filler, it needs to be more like this and less like the A-Team.

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  3. Or "The Expendables."

    The poster I kept seeing for "Knight and Day" didn't even feature pictures of the stars, but reperesented them as white silhouettes.

    I liked "Knight and Day." For me, it was unique in that it allowed Cruise to pretend to be James Bond (again)...but this was a Bond film for the "girl's" perspective—something EON has never done (but Bond creator Ian Fleming did in his book of "The Spy Who Loved Me"). And though she may not save "the day" in the end, she does save "the Knight." Heh.

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  4. I am a big fan of action movies with a little comedy inserted, so you have made me resolve to go and see a film in which I originally had no interest. Hmmm....

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