Knight and Day

Directed by James Mangold

(PG-13)

**

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The playful Knight and Day “reminds you why Tom Cruise is a star and makes you wish he’d loosen up more often,” said Marshall Fine in Huffingtonpost.com. The usually intense actor is “loose and likable” as a secret agent in this glossy, action-packed thriller. He and Cameron Diaz make delightful foils in a film that “owes a significant debt” to 1963’s Charade, which starred Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Thanks to a chance encounter in a Kansas airport, Diaz’s character accidentally gets caught up in a U.S. intelligence mission, forcing her to put her life in Cruise’s hands. Cruise carries Knight and Day with a “level of nimble assurance” that the rest of the film can’t quite match, said Justin Chang in Variety. Director James Mangold “flexes his action muscles,” but doesn’t establish a tone, develop his characters, or make sense of Patrick O’Neill’s inane script. The film plays like an “over-the-top Mission: Impossible,” said Kirk Honeycutt in The Hollywood Reporter. “Logic and plausibility” are replaced by nonstop action, and Cruise and Diaz are there to “sell the nonsense.”