Sunday, December 12, 2010

KNIGHT AND DAY (Three-Disc Combo)

Written by Pirata Hermosa

June Havens (Cameron Diaz) was in Wichita picking up some new parts for her father’s GTO in order to restore it as a wedding gift for her sister. But little did she know that she was about to have an “accidental” run in with rogue agent Roy Miller (Tom Cruise).

Initially she thinks it’s a lucky coincidence that she keeps running into Roy. But after she boards a supposedly full commercial jet to return home with but a handful of passengers aboard, she begins to get a little suspicious. After quickly dismissing that thought from her mind, she is surprised to find that while she was visiting the lavatory Roy not only killed all the other passengers but the pilots as well.

Once Roy manages to crash land the plane into a cornfield, he promptly tells the hysterical June that he works for the government and some of his colleagues have turned against him. He warns her to be careful of anyone that comes looking for him, that they will tell her that he is crazy, and if they say the words "safe" or "secure", that they are planning on killing her. Roy offers her a drink and she immediately passes out.

June wakes up the next morning in her own bed thinking that what happened the previous night was a dream. But she quickly finds out that it was real when FBI agents pick her up outside her house and want to take her to a secure location so she will be safe. As she begins to worry about her safety, Roy shows up and frees her during an elaborate high-speed chase on the streets of Boston.

The two are now partnered together in order to clear both their names and to protect the Zephyr, a secret invention that is a perpetual energy battery which is the size of a regular flashlight battery and can power an entire city.

In order to keep the Zephyr out of the wrong hands and the inventor who created it, Simon Peck (Paul Dano), their journey will take them around the world to Spain, a secret island in Jamaica and on a train through the Alps.

The three-disc set contains a Blu-ray, DVD and a digital copy of the film. The Blu-ray is presented in Widescreen 2.40:1 ratio with a 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio. The audio immerses you in the action with gunshots and explosions going off all around you. The video quality is a completely different experience. There’s a little graininess at the beginning and some warping when looking at the screens displaying the flight schedules. There’s also a number of times when the characters seem to really pop out compared to the background making it look like they are standing in front of green screens, but as some of the special features attest to, everything was shot on location and no green screens were used.

There are several features on the disc showing the making of the film, how the action scenes were filmed and what locations were used. The most interesting of the features was “Knight and Someday” where Tom Cruise flies into London to watch a Black Eyed Peas concert and then meets up with the band for the after party where they play the new song “Someday” that Tom had asked them to write for the film. Watching Tom chat up the members of the band seems a little surreal and then watching them all dance around while they play a recorded version of the song to a crowd of people foaming at the mouth behind barricades is just weird. And to top it off, the song isn’t very good.

The other cool but strange aspects of the bonus features section are the two viral videos “Soccer” and “Kick”. In the first one you watch Tom and Cameron from a distance as they are kicking a soccer ball back and forth. Suddenly they start doing a bunch of tricks. In the second one Cameron is practicing her karate kicks with a trainer and a giant cushion. Tom comes over and takes the cushion from the trainer and tells her to kick him as hard as she can. After a couple kicks, Tom gets distracted and looks away only to have Cameron kick him through a table and halfway across the lawn.

The film tries to walk a fine line between being an action film or a comedy. Unfortunately, it doesn’t walk it well enough to be either one. The comedy aspect isn’t pronounced enough. It gets close, but is then yanked back too abruptly into the seriousness of the situation. The action should be amazing. They used real locations. They set up good stunts and Cruise does his own. So why doesn’t it work? For some reason several of the stunts look fake. Even after watching the feature “Wilder Knights and Crazier Days” where they show how the stunts were done and how real they were, they just visually don’t work in the film.

Overall Knight and Day is not a bad film. It’s just an average film. The acting is good. There are plenty of exotic locations. There are a number of well-choreographed action scenes. There are many reasons why the film should succeed, but ultimately it just doesn’t live up to its full potential.

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: Knight and Day (Three-Disc Combo) on Blogcritics.