Knight and Day

I'm always hesitant to watch a Tom Cruise movie. Come on - the guy is absolutely off of his rocker. He made Brooke Shields cry because he said she's not as cool as him. What a punk!

I used to be a big fan of Cameron Diaz, (Was there something about Cameron?) until she started dating some dude from some boy band who dressed like he was protecting an inner-city street corner. I think his name is Justin Timberlake.

Anyway, both of these overly-glorified actors recently starred in the released-to-DVD movie Knight and Day. It's a play on words. In the movie, Cruise and Diaz are known as Miller and Havens, but that would not have stoked as much interest as Knight and Day, but Knight does come into play as you will find.

Cruise plays a secret operative (imagine that) and Diaz plays an unsuspecting victim (imagine that) who just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. However, through their trials and tribulations, Miller learns that Havens wouldn't make such a bad secret agent herself.

Would they eventually be able to work together to save the world?

Knight and Day also stars Peter Sarsgaard, who's been in such B movies as Rendition, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, K-19, and an Education.

Directed by James Mangold (3:10 to Yuma, Walk the Line, and Girl Interrupted), Knight and Day is rated PG-13 for circus violence, G-fab computer graphics, and some naughty words and some sexual innuendo. The movie is just about 2 hours long.

I actually didn't think Knight and Day was that bad. Tom Cruise doesn't seem to be pompous, but rather competent and matter-of-fact. I would say the movie is more about Cameron Diaz' character.

I give Knight and Day 3.2 stars. If you can't find any of the top-shelf movies to watch, this one will entertain you for the evening. You probably wouldn't care to see it twice, but once is okay.

Lions For Lambs

Honestly, Tom Cruise hasn't made a decent movie since Top Gun. There are some that will argue that Cocktail was a good movie. No it wasn't. Eyes Wide Shut? People only liked that movie because of the gratuitous nakedness. And Mission Impossible? More like Mission Imposter.


So when Lions For Lambs came out, I should have known better. It stars Tom Cruise as a Senator who's working on a new strategy in the war on terror. What drew me to the movie was that it was directed my Robert Redford, a decent actor. However, Meryl Streep was also in it. Not so decent.


In this movie, we are presented with 3 plots - Robert Redford as a professor at a college trying to engage a student whom he thinks has potential. Tom Cruise is in a dialog with Streep, a reporter to one of the big newspapers. He is trying to promote the new strategy. And finally, some troops have been deployed to Afghanistan to implement this new strategy and they are getting creamed.


Almost the entire time I kept thinking, when is this movie going to start? Where is it going? I figured the 3 had to be tied together by more than circumstantial activities. But no. That was the movie. Was anything resolved? Nope. Conflict resolution? Was there conflict? Good feelings at the end. Nada. What was the point of this movie? I know it was a jab at the Bush Adminsitration, not that I have a problem with that. Are we supposed to start looking at the bigger picture in life? Maybe.


I think this is the type of movie where you need to watch the directors cut or his interview at the end so that you can understand what the hell his intention was. As far as entertainment value, this movie had none.


Lions For Lambs is 92 minutes long, but it's a long and agonizing 92 minutes. The movie is rated R for violence, if you can make out the violence on the dark blue on black screen that is supposed to be night, and some language. Overall, I give this movie 2 stars. I figure there's some point in there somewhere and I can understand actors and directors using their stage as a place to push their agenda. But at least make it somewhat entertaining. Booo!