Remember the original trailer for Fox's big-budget Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz summer action tentpole Knight & Day? The one with all the flirty repartee and zinging bullets and stunts and voice-over and expensive star power fritzing your brain into little spastic flashbacks to, say, 2002 or so, well before Sam Worthington was in everything? This new trailer will only heighten that sensation and the overall stakes -- at least until the gratuitous beachgoing and green-screen bullfighting ring jolt you awake.
Still, Fox's approach hasn't changed much from last fall, when it warmed viewers up with a sort of quasi-romantic thriller tease before moving here into the more sexualized action selling points. Lest you think either Cruise or Diaz will get out of the movie without showing off their beach bodies, bzzzt. We're to believe Cruise is doing some pretty dramatic stunts as a secret agent gone off the reservation; some of them do look better than others. Ultimately, though, it's that lingering line to his blind date-turned-partner -- "They'll tell you I'm mentally unstable and violent and dangerous, and it'll all sound very convincing" -- that sticks, positioning Knight & Day as that all-too-rare Hollywood species: the megabudget self-parody. With guns. Looks like someone's been watching Anderson Cooper this week.
VERDICT: Still sold.