June Havens (Cameron Diaz) is catching a plane home from Wichita after a successful trip to retrieve some rare car parts. After (literally) bumping into charming and handsome Roy Miller (Tom Cruise) in the airport a couple of times, she finds herself pleasantly surprised to be sitting next to him on the flight. Unlucky in love, June gives herself a little pep talk in the bathroom to take advantage of this situation and not let another (seemingly) nice guy slip through her fingers. June exits the restroom to find not only the pilots dead but also the rest of the passengers and crew. Roy sits on an arm rest in the middle of the aisle with a couple of drinks, a charming smile and a calm explanation that he had no choice but to kill everyone and must now go land the plane.

After a rough crash landing in the middle of a corn field, Roy explains to June that some bad people will be coming after her now that they’ve been seen together. Her eyes becoming heavy and her vision swirling, June realizes that she’s been drugged. Before she passes out, Roy lays down a few more rules for June. She should deny having talked with Roy and beware of anyone representing themselves as CIA using words like “safe” and “security”. These are the last words June hears before passing out.

June wakes up in her bed unsure whether she dreamed up this experience with Roy or not. It isn’t until men posing as the CIA approach her with questions about Roy Miller that she realizes she might actually be in some hot water. Enter Roy who comes in with guns blazing. He saves June and together they hit the road caught up in a plot that involves a Spanish arms dealer and a rogue CIA operative who want nothing more than to see Roy and June silenced.

Don’t let the posters or trailers fool you, Knight and Day isn’t really an action movie. It’s actually a romantic comedy with some guns and a couple of elaborate fight sequences. Immediately, you feel like the writers were scratching their heads going

“Hmmmm… well, we’ve got the cute romantic comedy thing going on but how do we get guys to come see the flick. What do you think, Jerry?”

“Uhhhh… how about we throw in some guns?”

“THAT’S GENIUS, JER!”

And so that is what they did… with some of the most underwhelming results one could imagine.

Simply put, the film is painfully boring. Rather than the script actually building up to an action sequence, they just kinda happen at random without any kind of emotional investment. At no point do you find yourself on the edge of your seat or even remotely concerned for the well being of these characters who are poorly fleshed out. And on the few occasions when an action scene seems to be going somewhere, they resort to this device where Tom Cruise’s character drugs Cameron Diaz. Instead of seeing the sequence play out, you get little flashes as June flashes in and out of consciousness.

You really learn nothing of any real consequence about these two within the context of the story which makes you question the film when you should be enjoying it. The main question being “Why are these two attracted to each other?” The best answer I could muster is “Because.” Which is just weak.

What makes this even more disappointing is that you have James Mangold at the helm of this flick. The man directed 2007’s 3:10 to Yuma which balanced fine character development with some really remarkable gun fights. He also brought us Walk the Line which, in my opinion, was a triumph in filmmaking. The picture of the evolving love between Johnny Cash and June Carter that Mangold paints is so vivid and beautiful that you can’t help but feel let down when comparing it to the absolute bomb that is Knight and Day.

A colleague described Knight and Day as “a Bond film told from the Bond girl’s perspective”. If this is true, I can totally see now why they killed off most of the Bond girls so early on.

My fiancee and I went in to the theater to see Knight and Day with expectations that were met exactly by the film. That being said, we were expecting brainless action, and a middle of the road summer movie to kill two hours. Mission: Accomplished. Yeah, I said it.

First off, a movie like this as can obviously tell is fueled by the chemistry of its leads. Whereas Diaz and Cruise have worked together before onscreen (in one of my favorite movies, Cameron Crowe's 'Vanilla Sky'), their at bat here unfortunately strikes out. This movie is unabashedly hollow and it seemingly knows it. The action sequences are CGI-heavy, the plot run of the mill (rogue spy on the run and the woman caught up in the chase, they fall in love), and the humor is decent at best, with the laughs too far and few between. The chemistry between Diaz and Cruise is believable, but there's not a lot of charm. It does feel more interesting when Diaz's character gets swept up in the whole spy lifestyle and the adrenaline, but it just falls flat.

The movie is admittedly fun to watch, and I did appreciate the nods to over the top action a la True Lies like I mentioned earlier, it's just that this movie doesn't do it as well. As Tom Cruise's spy character Roy stands on the hood of a speeding car, all smiles...you know it's not going to be a super realistic movie (think Angelina Jolie jumping from truck to truck in 'Salt') but it's not quite over the top enough. You won't be bored seeing this flick, but you'll never really need to see it again after you have.

Overall this movie is a decent summer action/rom-com. Of course we have seen it all before as this film lacks a lot in originality, but lets face it, if you liked it before, you are gonna like it again (think Hangover 1 and 2. Exactly same film, different countries). Unfortunately for this film, it is incredibly forgettable, even with all of its crowd pleasing stunt work and flat out action. However, this film quite obviously, heavily relied on the mere presence of Cruise and Diaz to bring in the crowds and of course the trailer, which literally showed all of th best bits of this film. In essence a good, yet 'seen it all before' kinda film.