Knight and Day (2010)

During lunch time yesterday, I decided it was high time to watch the action comedy, starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, Knight and Day. When the trailers were first released, I wasn't too bothered with the movie to be honest. I'm not the world's biggest Tom Cruise fan (missed all his early stuff during my childhood, you know Top Gun and Vanilla Sky) and I really don't care much for Cameron Diaz.

I can't figure out why people say she is the most beautiful person on the silver screen. There are actresses who are much better looking and with significantly smaller oral cavity than her. Just off-hand, I can say Liv Tyler, Rachel McAdams and Amy Adams. Anyways, I just don't like her looks nor do I like her acting a great deal.

What sparked my interest, however, was when the two appeared on Top Gear in the last series to promote the movie. That episode of Top Gear (which I've already reviewed here) was easily on my Top 3 list and definitely the best content they've presented in the past 2 or 3 years (or 4 or 5 series). The chemistry of the two, and their really funny dispositions really caught my attention.

So, the film then...

It wasn't as bad as I thought it would have been. I've heard some rather bad stories about the movie, which also explains why it took me so long to finally go see it. Although... It definitely was not as good as I hoped it would have been.

I see the point during the movie to show from either actor's perspective when they were drugged in a black-out scene. However, they overly used this technique and you actually miss out on a lot of action and storyline. At the end of that sequence of events, you would ask yourself: "what happened and how did they get from there to there?"

Unfortunately, the trailer also turned out to be funnier than the movie actually is. And some of the other actors and actresses were so poor in their on-screen oratory presentation that I missed half of what they were going on about.

I think I'll stop here to be quite honest. The movie was OK to be as kind as I can. But I probably would watch something like The Expendables again over this movie.

What this exercise shows though, is that if you place the product cleverly and promote it in the right way, you can definitely gain more viewership and, in this case, box office production. Even for someone who has no interest in either of the leading actors/actresses, I was drawn to see it. Of course, they were lucky. The BBC no longer has a talk show to host promotion activities since Jonathan Ross left (or was he asked to go?), and they chose Top Gear as a replacement.

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