I went to see Knight and Day with a relatively open mind. I say relatively, because I think Tom Cruise is probably quite a sly and nasty piece of work. Also, the Redhead and Rose went to see the film on Friday and had pronounced it “Ho-Hum”; damning with faint praise.
So what can I tell you? Well, it’s one of those instantly recognisable spy capers: an unexplainable gadget of intrinsic value, cross purposes and betrayals and issues of identity, lots of CGI and a pair of protagonists who come to love each other via a series of outrageous action set pieces that occur in visually stunning places. Played serious, it could have been Mission Impossible. Luckily it’s not. In fact, aside from taking half an hour or so to get over the Tom Cruise ick factor, it was a pleasant enough way to wile away a Sunday afternoon in Belgrade.
As mentioned, the plot leaps from photogenic location to photogenic location: Boston to the Azores (actually Jamaica) to Salzburg to Seville (though quite why Austria was included as a plot point is a mystery – it’s kind of random.) Seville looks magnificent though – there’s lots of behind the scenes stuff online – including a great Access Hollywood insert here on the streets of Seville. Even nuggety little Tom seems decent enough, which – though I don’t believe or trust him for a nano-second – is a surprise.