REVIEW: Robotic Tom Cruise Weighs Down Knight and Day
Tom Cruise is no longer cool, a truth he just can't face -- if he could, he'd be cooler. In the opening moments of Knight and Day, Cruise strides through an airport in a uniform of coolness that may as well have been assembled from a checklist: Distinctive Persol sunglasses, an obviously cashmere V-neck sweater layered over a surely-not-Hanes T-shirt, a Baracuta jacket -- I'm only checking off the brand names the same way he and his costume department must have. The ringtone on his character's phone is "Louie, Louie." And he actually does some of his own stunts, just to show he can. Cruise really may be the hardest-working man in show business right now, but on him (in direct contrast to James Brown), all that sweat just isn't cool. Once coolness leaves you, how do you get it back?
As big a box-office draw as Cruise may have been in days of yore, he was never truly cool; he has always tried too hard. The more frightening reality, as posed by the ambitious but unsatisfying spy caper Knight and Day, is that he will never, ever go away. Cruise plays a guy named Roy Miller, blandly named for a reason: He is -- ssssshhh! -- a top superspy, trained by the government to slink around airports in dark glasses and the same brand of jacket Steve McQueen and James Dean wore. At one of those airports he -- wink, wink! -- bumps into a gangly-sexy vintage-auto mechanic with a carry-on suitcase full of precious car parts. Her name is June, and she's hauling some hard-to-find scrap from Kansas home to Boston, to refurbish her late father's '66 GTO as a wedding present for her ingrate younger sister (Maggie Grace).
At first June is mysteriously barred from the flight she's ticketed for; then, at the last minute, the attendant lets her on. The mysterious Roy, it turns out, is on the same flight, and they flirt shamelessly, until some very weird stuff happens. June finally makes it back to Boston, only to realize that everywhere she turns, there is Roy: Ingratiating himself with her ex-boyfriend, fireman Rodney (Marc Blucas, using his corn-fed wholesomeness brilliantly) or showing up out of nowhere on a motorcycle to save her from a pickle she has no idea how she got into. Eventually, they're making moo-eyes at each other in Austria and outrunning bulls in Spain, all in connection with secret superspy Roy's supersecret mission, which has something to do with a catfishy-looking guy played by Paul Dano.
In between, Cruise's Roy engages in many feats of derring-do, leaping from rooftop to rooftop and executing crazy bike jumps. But the results are curiously unthrilling, and it's hard not to wonder what the picture would be like with another male star. Knight and Day, which was directed by James Mangold (3:10 to Yuma, Walk the Line), has a few things going for it that shouldn't be underestimated: It's not a sequel, it's not based on a comic book or a runaway best-seller, and the script, credited to Patrick O'Neill, suggests that somewhere along the way, someone harbored a feeble hope for a picture with some wit and style. Knight and Day is at least an attempt at a languishing genre -- the spy caper with a sense of humor -- and unlike so many mainstream pictures these days, it actually tries to have a tone. Cruise's Roy keeps popping up in June's life in the damnedest places and in the damnedest ways: Mangold shows this via a cleverly edited soft-focus montage in which a drugged (for her own safety) June now and then opens her heavy eyelids to see Roy swinging upside down in a torture chamber, or flying some tiny, unsafe aircraft, or navigating a speedboat through choppy waters, all the while reassuring her that everything's cool.
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To Trace:
Read Charles Taylor's opinion of John Cassavetes. It's identical to Kael's. Read Taylor's opinion of LAST TANGO IN PARIS. It's identical to Kael's. Taylor has been trashing Cassavetes his entire career, while simultaneously boosting Brian DePalma every chance he gets (another evaluation identical to Kael's). He thinks Jonathan Demme was a great filmmaker till Silence of the Lambs ruined his promise (another opinion identical to Kael's). His opinion of which of Kubrick's movies are great and which are lousy is identical to Kael's: every single Kubrick picture gets thumbs up or thumbs down from Taylor depending on what Kael said about each particular title. The exact same Steven Spielberg pictures Kael liked are the ones Taylor and Zacharek like, and the same ones she was cool towards are the ones they tend to dismiss - sometimes this leads to comical contortions, as when Kael loved the first 45 minutes or so of Empire of the Sun but claimed it falls apart completely as the movie progresses - Taylor says almost the exact same thing somewhere in one of his reviews! He even copies KAEL'S EXACT OPINION when the movie, like Empire, is one she kind of liked but kind of didn't!
This is not film criticism. It's a cult of personality and nothing else besides. That might be tolerable even so, if Taylor and Zacharek mustered some actual evidence, and built actual coherent arguments, for their picks and pans. But they don't. They take it as a given that just because Kael thought something, all they need do is repeat what she said. They're wrong about that.
Thank you for your reply Patrick. I'd encourage you and everyone reading this to, if time permits, read Kael in depth and then compare what she says about particular films and filmmakers with what Zacharek and her husband Charles Taylor say about them. You'd soon realize that Taylor and Zacharek are epigones and clones of Kael (who was intelligent and original but wildly erratic in her often unpersuasive arguments).
Furthermore: even if Steph and Chuck read my comments and they change their practice in the future, it wouldn't change their track record. Their track record of Kael apologetics is available at Salon and elsewhere on the net for all to see. Even if they start changing it up a bit now (which I hope they do, as it's the only way they can ever contribute something of worth to the discussion of movies), my accusation still stands, and the proof of their deep derivativeness is there for all to see.
"And she had no problem dismissing Jolie's performance in Changeling."
Gee, Trace, and I suppose it's just a coincidence that Changeling just happened to be directed by Clint Eastwood, whom Kael despised and whose assessment Zacharek constantly copies. Gee, what a coincidence that the first serious, major thrashing Angie Jolie ever received from Zacharek just HAPPENED to be in an Eastwood flick.
That review was complete and utter bullshit! Never insult the "Cruise" again!!!!
Tom Cruise is positively one among the very best actors I know, I love almost all of his dvds and I tend not to care when some people say he's not really as decent as he was once.
Teeny Tom Cruise is a liar and a member of the most dangerous cult currently operating in the world. A cult so dangerous Germany (and THEY know what a cult is !) has banned them from its borders.
He faked a few marriages, adopted some kids because he allegedly shot blanks - and now HOSANNA! He spawned little ugly Sewery, an ugly Korean brought in fresh from the paddies for play-show Tom's life.
He's not a 'has-been," he's a "never-was."
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