This review first appeared in The Colorado Springs Gazette. To read this review at its original source, click here.

One of the main characters in the new action-comedy Knight and Day gets knocked out so many times it feels like she spends half the movie unconscious. I don’t blame her. I wish I’d spent the entire thing that way.

Tom Cruise plays Roy Miller, a covert FBI agent who may or may not have gone rogue and is trying to sell a new energy source to the highest bidder. Cameron Diaz is June Haven, an everywoman caught in the crossfire between Roy and those (Peter Sarsgaard and Viola Davis) who want him dead.

Unsure of what to believe, June finds herself saddled with Roy on one globetrotting adventure after another (for no discernable reason other than we’ve come to expect exotic locales in our spy thrillers), the victim of close calls, nefarious double-crosses and, of course, unrequited sexual tension. Roy may be someone June could fall in love with, if she can stay alive long enough to find out if he’s one of the good guys or the bad guys.

There are two things in movies that should be impeccably tight—humor and action. Knight and Day has neither. From a flaccid opening action sequence aboard a jetliner set to the pace of dripping winter molasses to comedic lines that are delivered in between the forlorn chirping of crickets, Knight and Day never picks up any steam. It’s as if director James Mangold (Walk the Line, 3:10 to Yuma) is going out of his way to let us dwell on how charming his star, who is still waging a PR battle for his tarnished image, can be. Cruise does a lot of flashing his trademark pearly whites, but there is no charisma in his persona, or in the chemistry between him and Diaz.

The Bourne films have been out long enough and are popular enough that a film borrowing their thrills but injecting humor in the place of high drama seems only appropriate, and even welcome. However, Knight and Day, which borrows a bit in tone from True Lies, feels like someone mined the most preposterous moments of the James Bond Moore years and made an entire movie out of what they found. Ludicrous and outlandish, Knight and Day lacks even basic plausibility, overflowing with plot holes the size of Wichita, and punctuated with stunt after stunt created on a green screen rather than on location.

It won’t be long now before Cruise is going to have to decide whether he wishes to continue seeking heroic movie roles like Roy Miller, or pieces better suited for a 49-year-old man who, while still staggeringly handsome, is definitely starting to look a bit wrinkled around the edges. It can’t be an easy transition to make, especially for someone with Cruise’s megawattage.

I saw two different movies with the same title in the span of one week. Night and Day was the delightful and surprisingly powerful Pixar short that debuted before Toy Story 3. Knight and Day was a feature-length film from which I was expecting nothing more than dumb fun. But instead, all I got was dumb.

© Copyright 2010 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.

Directed by James Mangold
Starring: Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Peter Sarsgaard, Viola Davis, Paul Dano
Rated PG-13 for violence and brief strong language.
Running Time: 109 minutes