(Spoilers) Knight and Day Review

***SPOILER WARNING: Spoilers may be found in the post below about VARIOUS ITEMS. And I'm going to add in a bit of filler text here to limit how much of the main article gets shown in a preview. That should take care of most of it. Hopefully. And away we go. SPOILER WARNING. ***
This has been on TV a few times lately..

Overview
June (Cameron Diaz), the owner of a car restoration garage, becomes involved in an international game of espionage by chance after she bumps into Roy (Tom Cruise). Action, adventure, romantic comedy?

Good or Bad?
To really break it down, the movie was about a woman with no special combat training who got caught up in a little war between Roy, a very well trained spy or assassin, and some very dangerous organizations. All of it was over a very lucrative invention and Roy's job of protecting the young inventor. There was a major comedic angle to the whole movie that played off the interaction between June and Roy -- two completely different worlds colliding. Roy was essentially Jason Bourne or James Bond minus the social awkwardness or angst -- he was an incredibly nice guy who also had no issue putting people down left and right.

I did not see this movie in the theatre. It was on television one Saturday night a year or two ago and I gave it a chance. There weren't very high expectations going it. Now, I've seen it maybe a half dozen times from beginning to end. It was just plain fun. The movie had me laughing throughout despite the violence.

Most of that fun was due to the performances by Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. I've seen two or three of Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible movies and his character in Knight and Day felt very different. There was a sense of urgency and seriousness one would expect from a professional spy, but he really turned on the charm. It just looked like he was having a lot of fun. My impression was that Cameron Diaz, the star whom the movie revolved around, played her character with more seriousness. This helped ground the movie to make it more believable. And it also drew a larger contrast between the two characters that lead to a clash that played out well.

I found the special effects to be pretty well done. Some of the CGI looked more obvious than others, but it didn't detract from the movie for me. While there were a lot of guns fired, lots of explosions, and many people going down, the focus of the movie really seemed to be about the interaction of the two leads. It was a romantic comedy underneath everything, after all.

Pacing felt good and I didn't find any parts to be slow. I almost wanted to say that one or two of the action sequences could have been shortened. However, with so much of the character development and bonding between June and Roy embedded right into the action, it was fine. The action was more of a background item.

So, Knight and Day, how was it? The movie didn't seem to take itself too seriously, and it felt like one long rollercoaster ride that I had a lot of fun with.