Knight and Day

20th Century Fox

Rating: PG

109 minutes

Knight and Day may look like an action movie, but five minutes into it you realize that this is all completely unbelievable and it’s probably meant to be a comedy. Anyway, there’s lots to laugh at.

Cameron Diaz plays a ditzy dame boarding a plane for her sister’s wedding and literally bumps into Tom Cruise (twice) who’s on the same flight.

The plane is strangely empty except for a few men and while Diaz is primping in the bathroom Cruise fights and kills them all, including the pilots.

But that’s okay because Cruise can then crash land the plane in a cornfield and the chase is on through the States, a tropical island and Austria. Cruise, who is apparently a secret agent gone rogue, has a new perpetual-energy battery that everyone wants, especially his former partner, the bad guy, played by Peter Sarsgaard.

It’s one slam-bang action scene after another. Crashing and burning cars and motorcycles, dodging explosions, leaping from buildings, shooting it out with endless attackers, it rarely lets up. Some of it is so spectacular and incredible you just assume it is computer generated. Cruise’s always-in-motion character, some kind of second cousin to Jason Bourne, makes James Bond look shy and lethargic.

But the movie is also fun and entertaining, and often played for laughs, especially by Cruise and Diaz, who have a chemistry of a kind. Hard to believe our leading man Cruise will turn 48 this Saturday.

Rating: four deer of five

Next Week on Video

Richard Gere and a cast of big names play action cops in Brooklyn’s Finest.

Alf Cryderman is a Red Deer freelance writer and old movie buff.