Review for Knight and Day

Introduction

I just don’t have the time for broadcast television any more, which is a bit of a shock, as I love movies, there are more movies on TV now than ever before, and so many of them from the last few years that I haven’t seen. It should be a golden age for a movie fan like me. But my broadcast television viewing occurs in short bursts between review discs; if I happen to channel hop over to a movie that looks interesting, it’s a quick grab of the tablet, surfing over to a price comparison website to see if the Blu-ray is under £5, and I then place an order. A few days later, the disc goes onto my ever growing to-watch pile. And that’s how I finally get around to watching Knight and Day, seven years after it was released.


All June Havens wanted to do was to get back home to Boston in time for her sister’s wedding, but the flight she had booked was full up, although the enigmatic man she bumped into on the airport concourse seemed to think that was fortunate. Unfortunately for June, bumping into Roy Miller got her noticed, and put on that plane anyway, a plane that turned out to be suspiciously empty. I say unfortunately, because the other passengers were all spies, and all of them looking to kill Roy Miller. And if simply bumping into him made her a person of interest, surviving a plane crash with him is going to make her America’s most wanted.


This disc comes with the theatrical version and the extended cut, and I only watched the latter for the purposes of this review. It’s also a triple play release with a Blu-ray disc, and a DVD disc which also contains a digital copy of the film, no doubt expired by now.

Picture

Knight and Day gets a 2.40:1 widescreen 1080p transfer on the Blu-ray. It’s clear and sharp, another pixel perfect transfer of a recent film, with strong detail, good contrast, and rich and consistent colours. Knight and Day was also the poster child of the orange and teal action movie revolution, but to my horror, I think I’m becoming used to the endless parade of Donald Trump complexions. It was only towards the end of the movie when I was presented with a bright green cloud-free sky that the colour timing really hit me.

Sound

You have the choice between DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround English and DTS 5.1 Surround French, and there is also an English audio descriptive track on the disc. Subtitles consist of English, French, Danish, Finnish, Dutch, Cantonese, Mandarin, Serbian, Hebrew, Norwegian, Swedish, Bulgarian, Croatian, Arabic, Romanian, Icelandic, Portuguese, and Slovenian. The surround suits this film well, really bringing the action sequences to life without overpowering the dialogue. I also quite like the film’s quirky soundtrack, a rather Gallic and light tone, something of a counterpoint to the action movie genre.

Extras

You get two discs in a Blu-ray Amaray, one on a central hinged panel. The disc autoplays trailers for The A-Team, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, and Unstoppable, before booting to an animated menu. The disc is of the type that holds its place in the player memory after being ejected.

There is a small handful of featurettes on this disc, strictly of the EPK type, but not outstaying their welcome.


Wilder Knights and Crazier Days lasts 12:30, and looks at the stunts and action in the movie.

Boston Days and Spanish Knights lasts 8:10 and does the same for the locations.

Knight and “Someday” featuring the Black-Eyed Peas and Tom Cruise lasts 9:09, 1080i 60Hz, and is a bit of a promo for the end theme of the movie.


There are a couple of Viral Videos, Soccer and Kick, running to 1:10 and 1:25 respectively and once again in 1080i.

The theatrical trailer lasts 2:26 and is in 1080p like the first two featurettes. There is also a BD Live link. Although after seven years, there probably isn’t any BD Live content anymore.

Conclusion

There’s more than one way to spoof a genre, as I learned last night watching Knight and Day. It’s a parody of the spy genre, riffing off films like James Bond, the Bourne movies, The Man From U.N.C.L.E, and even Tom Cruise’s own Mission Impossible franchise. If you think spy spoofs, your first thought will most likely be Austin Powers, a franchise which played with the story tropes and character clichés, what we’ve come to expect from a parody. Knight and Day goes in a different direction. It keeps the story straight, the characters are a little more grounded, realistic, but what it does is that it ups the action to the nth level. This goes beyond death-defying and hair-raising edge of the seat stuff. This action breaks the laws of physics, is so over the top that you no longer take it seriously. Knight and Day is nothing if not a live action cartoon. The thing is that once you accept that, it’s also pretty darned entertaining as well.


It’s a Hollywood truism that two people thrown together in adversity are liable to develop romantic feelings, and so it is for June and Roy in Knight and Day. A mechanic from Boston and a rogue spy find circumstances pushing them together, and over the course of the film, romance ensues. It’s the dialogue, the chemistry, the spark between Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise that keep this film engaging and entertaining. It’s written a little like a sixties romantic comedy, with plenty of snappy dialogue, except that there is gun play, and explosions going off in the background. It also doesn’t hurt that the film uses True Lies as a touchstone, with June’s introduction to the world of espionage a little similar to that of Helen Tasker’s.


It’s the over the top action that turns a spy movie into a screwball comedy. Sure you have the mole in the service, the technological Maguffin that everyone is after; the plot is as clichéd as any spy movie worth its salt. But once the patently impossible action starts, the exotic globe-trotting at the speed of plot, you either enjoy this film with a daft grin on your face, or the suspenders of your disbelief snap back so hard that your nipples will be black and blue for a week. Knight and Day is a fun, action, romance comedy, and you don’t get too many of those.