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2010 American film

Knight and Day
Teaser poster
Directed by	James Mangold
Written by	Patrick O'Neill
Produced by	José Luis Escolar, Todd Garner, Cathy Konrad, Arnon Milchan, Steve Pink, Joe Roth, Marsha L. Swinton, E. Bennett Walsh
Starring	Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Maggie Grace, Paul Dano, Marc Blucas, Viola Davis, Olivier Martinez
Cinematography	Phedon Papamichael
Edited by	Quincy Z. Gunderson, Michael McCusker
Music by	John Powell
Production company	Regency Enterprises
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date	June 23, 2010 (2010-06-23)
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	US$125 million

Knight and Day, (formerly titled Wichita and Trouble Man) is an upcoming action comedy film starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. The film is directed by James Mangold. It will mark the first time Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz have starred together on-screen since the 2001 film Vanilla Sky.

The film's investors offset funding costs by paying Tom Cruise a lower advance fee, and by neglecting to provide Cruise with a share of the revenue until the financiers earn back their initial investment in the production. Knight and Day received negative reviews from Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and Chicago Tribune.

Plot

Knight and Day follows Roy Miller (Cruise) and June Havens (Diaz). After crashing into Miller twice on the way home from Wichita to pick up car parts, Havens is told she has been bumped to a later flight. Meanwhile, Agent Fitzgerald (Saarsgard), believing Havens is working with Miller, puts her back on the plane. Completely taken with Miller, Havens goes to the restroom, and the remaining passengers all attack Miller. After a forward moment where Havens kisses Miller, he calmly informs her that everyone on the plane is dead, including the pilots. Believing it a joke, Havens plays along until Miler enters the cockpit and the bodies of the passengers begin to shift around the plane. Crashing into a corn field, Miller delivers Havens home after drugging her and explaining that other agents will visit, and if they constantly repeat that she is being taken somewhere "safe and secure", they are planning to kill or imprison her.

Waking up at home, Havens struggles through a day fitting a bridesmaids dress for her sister's wedding, and is shocked to learn her sister would like to sell their father's GTO, which Havens had planned on finishing as a wedding present. Havens is then picked up by a group of intelligence agents. Miller arrives and through a long gunfight on the highway, kills several agents and reclaims Havens. Havens flees at the first opportunity and contacts Rodney (Blucas), a firefighter and former boyfriend. Believing Havens is merely stressed and is playing through a fantasy, Rodney tries to comfort her until Miller arrives and kidnaps Havens, handcuffing her and shooting Rodney is a specific non-vital area, telling him it'll make him a hero and virtually guarantee his promotion to Lieutenant.

Miller explains that Havens is safer with him, and Havens agrees to follow him as they go to pick up Simon Feck, a genius inventor who created a perpetual energy battery called the Zephyr. Miller arrives at his safe house where he left Feck, only to find him gone, and the two are ambushed by men belonging to Antonio, a Spanish arms dealer. After again drugging Havens, she drifts in and out between their capture and escape from Antonio's men, and Miller brings her to an island that is off the grid which Miller uses as a safehouse. Accepting a call from her sister after leaving in frustration, Havens accidentally leads the CIA straight to the hideaway, who try to kill Miller and Havens with a remote drone.

Again knocking out Havens, Miller transports them to a train heading through the Alps, which Feck left as a message in code for Miller. Havens, missing a message from Miller, leaves to get dinner and encounters Danny (Rich Manley), a German assassin. Using tricks learned from Miller, Danny is knocked from a window and killed by a train heading in the other direction.

Miller, after leaving Havens and Feck in a hotel in Spain, heads to a meet with a cutout from Antonio, and is followed by Havens, who is heartbroken to learn that Miller is apparently planning on selling the Zephyr to Antonio. After being picked up by the CIA and meeting the director of counter-intel, she uses a pen transmitter to notify them when Miller returns with the Zephyr, which is showing signs of overheating. After leading the CIA agents on a chase, Miller is apparently shot and falls into a canal.

Returning home, Havens heads to an address she remembered from Miller's iPhone, she finds Miller's parents, who believe their son, a former Army sergeant and Eagle Scout, is dead, but are fabulously wealthy from winning lotteries and sweepstakes they don't remember entering. Leaving a message that she has the Zephyr, she is captured by Antonio's men and is taken back to Spain. She is drugged with truth serum before being rescued by Miller, who was tracking Fitzgerald, who was delivering Feck to Antonio.

Chasing Fitzgerald, Miller saves Feck from a bullet wound after handing over the Zephyr in a small satchel. Feck comments that the battery is unstable. The battery explodes, killing Fitzgerald, and Miller collapses from a gunshot wound. After waking in the hospital, Miller receives an apology from the director, who tells him that Havens has returned home, and claims that Miller can't be distracted. Miller is later given medication by a nurse, who turns out to be Havens. After breaking Miller out of the hospital, he wakes up in the rebuilt GTO that belonged to Havens's father. After asking what day it is, Havens kisses Miller and tells him its someday, a reference to the start of the movie that they both have things they want to do someday, and Havens begins to drive towards Cape Horn.

Cast

Production

Financing

The film's production partners, New Regency and Dune Entertainment offset financing for the film by paying Tom Cruise a lower advance fee than he normally receives. Cruise usually receives $20 million or higher in an advance fee, but the Los Angeles Times reported he only received $11 million for Knight and Day. Cruise will also not receive "first dollar gross", which was previously customary for him. This means that Cruise will not receive a share of the film's revenue, until Knight and Day funding investors have first gained back their investment in the production.

Filming

Principal photography began in mid-September 2009 in Boston and Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Airport terminal scenes were filmed at Worcester Regional Airport. Filming also took place in Melrose, Danvers, and New Bedford, Massachusetts. Spanish cities Cadiz and Seville, as well as Austrian city Salzburg, were also chosen as locations.

Soundtrack

Black Eyed Peas recorded a theme song for the movie, titled, "Someday".

Marketing

The New York Observer analyzed the marketing for the film, which included an attempt at pushing a "viral video" of the two main stars; journalist Christopher Rosen commented on the desperation level of the publicity campaign, "the marketing for this thing has seemed more intrusive and desperate than any other big-ticket release in some time." Film producer Don Carmody commented negatively regarding the film's trailer, calling it "dull", and stated the film would not do well because of the age of its two stars, "Cameron Diaz I think was a star, but she’s no longer a star. Some of those stars are getting a little up there (in age)." The Hollywood Reporter noted, "potential viewers remain startlingly indifferent to whether they actually end up seeing it. And attention thus far is still drawn mostly by those under 25, which indicates that the fans who grew up with star Tom Cruise have moved on."

On June 19, 2010, the Los Angeles Times reported that pre-release surveys determined that the film was likely to become a commercial flop. Projections indicated that the film would only make US$20 million at the box office; the film cost $125 to produce. Fox production President Emma Watts commented of the film's commercial prospects, "We aren't exactly where we hoped we would be." Los Angeles Times noted, "In addition, Cruise and Diaz are not as popular with younger moviegoers, who often drive big opening weekends in the summer. ... Among teenage and college-age males, the movie is barely registering, according to people who have seen the survey results." New York Magazine reported the film was "tracking miserably" prior to its first week. New York Magazine reported that an issue with Knight and Day was, "one of the film's biggest handicaps: its star, Tom Cruise". A FOX official commented to New York Magazine on June 18, 2010 regarding its polling data, "at those numbers, we can’t open the movie right now. Hopefully, they’ll change in the next few days."

Critical reception

Knight and Day received a negative review in Variety; critic Justin Chang characterized the film as "a high-energy, low-impact caper-comedy that labors to bring a measure of wit, romance and glamour to an overworked spy-thriller template". Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter summarized his review of the film with, "Bottom Line: Logic and plausibility take a holiday in this nonstop actioner that counts on stars Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz to sell the nonsense." Honeycutt wrote of the writing, "the script is too lazy to develop any of its characters -- and that includes the leads", and commented, "laziness permeates the film from the inexplicable escapes to the neglected romance". Knight and Day received a rating of one and a half stars from a review by Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune; which criticized multiple aspects of the film, including its script, directing, cinematography, set pieces, and action sequences. Phillips concluded, "A 21st Century 'Charade' pumped up on all the wrong steroids, 'Knight and Day' may well suffice for audiences desperate for the bankable paradox known as the predictable surprise, and willing to overlook a galumphing mediocrity in order to concentrate on matters of dentistry." Lexi Feinberg of Big Picture Big Sound gave the film a rating of one and a half stars, and characterized it as an "asinine, action-adventure dud", with a "stupid plot". Feinberg commented, "'Knight and Day' is a ludicrous, large-scale failure".

American film critic and professor Emanuel Levy was critical of the film's writing, calling it a "mindless flick"; he noted, "The story moves at a breakneck speed, as if to conceal the incongruities in the storytelling." Levy gave the film a grade of "C", and commented, "Preposterously plotted, the saga is dominated by long, energetic, uneven action sequences, but it lacks any logic and pays minimal attention to characterization. Repetitious in structure, and with humor that more often than not misses the mark, 'Knight and Day' is characterized by nihilistic violence and amoral tone, which wouldn't have mattered had the movie been witty or fun to watch." Simon Abrams of Slant Magazine gave the film a rating of two stars out of four, and commented of the film's director and writer, "Clearly O'Neill and Mangold are trying to give viewers what producers would undoubtedly like to sell as 'something for everybody,' but there's no consistency to the thing and no chemistry whatsoever between Cruise and Diaz, making the alternating tug-of-war between girly and manly elements of the film seem extraordinarily forced." In a review published in The Victoria Advocate, Robert Philpot of McClatchy Newspapers called the movie "disposable", and singled out the film's script as its "biggest problem", commenting that it "feels lazy right from its lame-pun title".

In a review for The Huffington Post, critic Marshall Fine observed, "the movie bubbles happily for almost an hour before it flags". Colin Covert of Star Tribune compared Knight and Day to the 2010 film Killers starring Katherine Heigl and Ashton Kutcher, "The film looks unambitious, like a remake of 'Killers,' the Ashton Kutcher-Katherine Heigl guns-and-giggles toss-off everyone has already forgotten, but with bigger stunts and more star wattage." Robert Bell of Exclaim! wrote of the script, "Sure, things slow down a bit around the midway point, making it clear that there is very little going on here aside from cheesy escapist fantasy, but things quickly pick up again, engaging us in the moment of a movie that knows exactly what mainstream trash cinema should be." In a review for the Orlando Sentinel, critic Roger Moore commented, "The blase plot devices (a gadget, the nerdy guy who invented it), the bland villains, the too-fast dash through exotic locales, don't matter so long as Cruise and Diaz click and spark their scenes -- chases and embraces -- to life. And Cruise, hurling himself at this as if his Mission: Impossible future and indeed his whole career depended on it, makes sure they do."

References

^ "Fox Struggles to Overcome the Tom Cruise Problem with Knight and Day". New York Magazine. nymag.com. June 18, 2010. Retrieved June 19, 2010.
^ Friedman, Roger (June 20, 2010). "Tom Cruise New Film". Hollywood News. www.hollywoodnews.com. Retrieved June 21, 2010. alternate link
^ Fleming, Mike (October 12, 2009). "Cruise Pic Gets a Title". Variety. variety.com. Retrieved June 19, 2010.
Template:Amg movie
Candler, T C. "Independent Critics – Review Page". www.independentcritics.com. Retrieved February 23, 2009.
^ Eller, Claudia (June 19, 2010). "Fox to sneak-preview movie 'Knight and Day' to generate missing buzz". Los Angeles Times. California: www.latimes.com. Retrieved June 19, 2010. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
^ Chang, Justin (June 19, 2010). "Knight and Day". Variety. Reed Elsevier Inc. Retrieved June 19, 2010.
^ Honeycutt, Kirk (June 19, 2010). "Knight and Day -- Film Review". The Hollywood Reporter. www.hollywoodreporter.com. Retrieved June 19, 2010. alternate link
^ Phillips, Michael J (June 21, 2010). "'Knight and Day' tries for laughs, goes down with its flames -- 1 1/2 stars". Chicago Tribune. www.chicagotribune.com. Retrieved June 21, 2010. alternate link
^ Bentley, David (June 2, 2010). "New 'super trailer' and extended clip for Tom Cruise's Knight and Day". Coventry Telegraph. coventrytelegraph.net. Retrieved June 15, 2010.
Staff reports (October 28, 2009). "Melrose's Hollywood streak continues with Tom Cruise filming on Friday". Melrose Free Press. GateHouse Media. Retrieved October 28, 2009. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
"Tom Cruise-Film: Komparsen für Salzburg-Dreh gesucht" (in German). Die Presse. November 6, 2009. Retrieved November 6, 2009.
Black Eyed Peas new Song Someday ('Knight and Day' theme) for Upcoming Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz Movie
Rosen, Christopher (June 17, 2010). "The Knight and Day Desperation Index". The New York Observer. Retrieved June 17, 2010.
Howell, Peter (June 17, 2010). "Howell: Speaking truth to boo birds of summer". The Toronto Star. www.thestar.com. Retrieved June 17, 2010.
Fernandez, Jay A. (June 17, 2010). "Bullseye". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved June 18, 2010.
^ Feinberg, Lexi (June 21, 2010). "Knight and Day Movie Review". Big Picture Big Sound. www.bigpicturebigsound.com. Retrieved June 22, 2010.
^ Levy, Emanuel (June 21, 2010). "Film review - Knight and Day". Emanuel Levy - Cinema 24/7. emanuellevy.com. Retrieved June 22, 2010.
Abrams, Simon (June 21, 2010). "Knight and Day". Slant Magazine. www.slantmagazine.com. Retrieved June 22, 2010.
Philpot, Robert (McClatchy Newspapers) (June 21, 2010). "Knight and Day". The Victoria Advocate. www.victoriaadvocate.com. Retrieved June 21, 2010.
Fine, Marshall (June 21, 2010). "Movie review: Knight and Day". The Huffington Post. www.huffingtonpost.com. Retrieved June 21, 2010.
Covert, Colin (Star Tribune) (June 21, 2010). "On the eve of Knight and Day,' examining the enigma that is Tom Cruise". Miami Herald. www.miamiherald.com. Retrieved June 21, 2010.
Bell, Robert (June 21, 2010). "Knight and Day Review". Exclaim!. Canada: www.exclaim.ca. Retrieved June 21, 2010.
Moore, Roger (June 21, 2010). "Movie Review: Knight and Day". Orlando Sentinel. www.orlandosentinel.com. Retrieved June 21, 2010.

External links

v t e Films directed by James Mangold
Heavy (1995) Cop Land (1997) Girl, Interrupted (1999) Kate & Leopold (2001) Identity (2003) Walk the Line (2005) 3:10 to Yuma (2007) Knight and Day (2010) The Wolverine (2013) Logan (2017) Ford v Ferrari (2019) Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) A Complete Unknown (2024)

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