The End Comes For Logan.

The Good: Decent performances, Effective use of mood, Moments of character
The Bad: Stifling mood, Generic chase plot, Overabundance of generic adversaries
The Basics: The story of Logan - The Wolverine - of the X-Men comes to a close in one of the most difficult films to grace the genre yet.


One of the difficult aspects of being a reviewer is that speed is often rewarded over accuracy. Early reviewers get a huge volume of traffic, they can set the entire tone for the reviews that follow, they can prejudice a massive number of potential audience members by putting their take into the marketplace first. The severe detraction of rushing a review out is that it does not allow the viewer to let the film live and breathe within them and in the case of big-budget special-effects driven films, often reviewers get so excited by the spectacle and (for less mature reviewers) the hype of early access that they do not actually consider what they watched in any objective sense.

So, it has been almost twenty-four hours since I watched Logan, the latest installment in the X-Men Saga and the film that has been widely announced as being Hugh Jackman's final portrayal of Wolverine and Patrick Stewart's final outing as Charles Xavier. And it could easily be. Logan includes a pretty sizable narrative gap between X-Men: Days Of Future Past (reviewed here!) - or the post-credits sequence from X-Men: Apocalypse - and one suspects that if the right script came along and the money was right, Jackman and/or Stewart might be up for another outing. But, for now, Logan is being billed as the end of the franchise.

And it's rough.

Logan is a tough movie and part of the reason I took almost a day to review it is that I was not sure how I felt about it. Logan has an entirely oppressive mood. After the Deadpool short attached to the print, Logan is introduced as a dreary, dark piece that sinks the viewer deeper and deeper into a morass of misery from which the film only briefly recovers. There are plenty of moody, dark pieces that I absolutely love . . . but Logan is not one of them.

It took me a few solid hours of mulling the film over to finally recognize that I did not enjoy Logan. And I was excited about Logan going in. I knew only the most basic premise of the graphic novel Old Man Logan - which influenced the creation of the film, though it is not at all an adaptation of that book - before I watched Logan and I was excited about both the reinvention of the character and the potential of actually seeing the Wolverine's story bookended. Given that virtually no one stays dead in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the X-Men films have gone to great lengths to resurrect and rewrite the histories of characters, the idea of a character whose story actually ends had more than a little appeal to me. But Logan is rough and joyless and when it is not that, it feels unfortunately derivative and like a series of genuinely missed opportunities.

Logan opens in 2029, twenty-five years after the last mutant was born and after most mutants have been wiped out through an act of genocide and a mysterious something else that actually comes up within the narrative. Logan has returned to using his mundane birth name - James Howlett - and he drives a limo between Texas and Mexico. Logan experiences daily pain, vastly slower regeneration of his wounds, and drinks and swears quite a bit more. He is also the primary caregiver for Charles Xavier, whom he has squirreled away in Mexico with the mutant Caliban.

Right off the bat, Logan gives a big, long, middle finger to the audience and fans of the X-Men Saga. Logan is R-rated and it is VERY R-rated and that is absolutely fine. But X-Men: Days Of Future Past climaxed with a scene filled with hope, fellowship, and a slew of dead characters and actors who returned to the franchise, spent hours and hours in make-up prep, just to say "hello." And, like the opening of Alien 3 (reviewed here!) which utterly destroyed the family Ripley had built in Aliens (reviewed here!) before the opening credits were done, Logan shits all over the potential of who and what the X-Men became after Logan saved the mutants from Trask and his insidious research by completely leaping beyond their stories. In fact, in Logan, the X-Men adventures were adapted into comic books, which Logan despises. But, the narrative gap and the loss of all of the familiar faces - save two - effectively sets up the tone of Logan. Logan is lost and mutantkind is virtually extinct.

Logan, Charles and Caliban are sequestered in Mexico - in one of the most subtle allusions to The Wolverine (reviewed here!) that could be made! - because Charles is dying and periodically, he has seizures which incapacitate everyone within a significant radius of him. Caliban complains that the effects are starting to wound him, but Logan keeps Xavier medicated to prevent the seizures from occurring while he works to earn enough money to buy a boat for the pair which would get them away from other people. When Logan acts as a driver for a funeral, he is accosted at the event by Gabriella, who begs Logan for help. Logan denies her aid and returns to Mexico with medicine for Charles and Caliban tells Wolverine that Charles has been very insistent in his ramblings that there is a new mutant. Logan does not believe him until he is approached by the cyborg "reaver" Pierce about getting back something that Gabriela has taken and then he is hired by Gabriela to get her and her "daughter" Laura to safety.

Logan only accepts the transport job because there is enough money in it to get him and the Professor the ship he wants. But, when Gabriela is killed and Laura hitches a ride back to Logan's hideout, Wolverine finds himself drawn into a conflict virtually identical to the one Han Solo found himself in after transporting Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi. While Logan initially attempts to save himself and Charles, he quickly learns that Laura is deeply connected to him. Recovering Gabriela's smartphone, he learns about Transigen, a company that continues to experiment upon mutants and the place from which Gabriela rescued Laura. Logan also learns that Laura was created from his DNA and is, essentially, his daughter. But when Pierce and others from Transigen come hunting Laura, using the captured Caliban, Logan, Charles, and Laura are forced on the run in the direction of Laura's mythical "Eden" - a safe haven for the last surviving mutants.

Logan is an odd mix of cerebrally-disturbing, over-the-top violent, and painfully predictable and derivative. The intelligently-upsetting aspect of Logan comes from the fact that the two main protagonists are aging . . . and poorly in the film. Both Charles and Logan are undergoing serious physical deteriorations and Xavier's is particularly unsettling as it risks the lives of those around him. Logan illustrates very realistically some of the ugliness surrounding end-of-life issues in a fearless way that does not actually get shown in super hero films.

As for the violence, director James Mangold seems thrilled to be able to make an R-rated Wolverine-centered movie and he uses that canvas to the fullest. There are at least two decapitations, burned bodies, limbs that get sliced off, plenty of blood-spray from arterial stabbing and the obligatory throat-slashing or two (though the throats are not overdone in Logan, which is very nice). Logan, Transigen's cloned X-24, and the weaponized Laura (X-23 ) put their claws through multiple heads, arms, chests and legs, all while getting shot and stabbed at repeatedly. And just when it seems like James Mangold draws a line by not subjecting the viewer to a child getting their head blown off (the child's head is kept out of frame while menaced), he manages to up the stakes by having children combine forces to execute one person and have a single child shoot off an adult's head (or most of it). Logan is so R that the two people who brought their crying infants to last night's showing of the film should be arrested for child endangerment.

So, Logan is unsettling. And when it is not unsettling it is just bad. It's not all bad, let's be fair. On the plus side is the acting. Stephen Merchant is excellent as Caliban. Caliban was briefly introduced in X-Men: Apocalypse (reviewed here!) and had to be recast because the events of Logan follow almost fifty years after the events of Apocalypse. Merchant is brilliantly serious in the role of Caliban, a mutant who barely uses his powers and instead tries to get Logan to open up and talk to him like an adult. Merchant emotes quite a bit through his eyes to make Caliban concerned, fearful and determined and he plays the full range well.

Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart show off their immense range in Logan as well, though there is nothing surprising from either actor in their performances. Two amazing actors manage to play hurt, frustrated, strong, senile, and strangely loving, not surprising at all. Eric La Salle might well be in that category, too, but I've not seen him in much else, so I was impressed by his performance. Elizabeth Rodriguez shows off her range by playing Gabriela as desperate and frightened in a way she was never allowed to play her Orange Is The New Black character.

Of course, much of Logan hinges on the performance of Dafne Keen, who plays Laura. Keen spends most of the film mute and, as a result, has to act with her eyes, body and in reaction shots to what other people are saying. And she is good. Keen plays off Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, and especially Quincy Fouse like a pro. More than simply playing the creepy little girl type (who can rip off your head or possess you), Keen manages a wide range of emotions with minimal words in a compelling break-out performance.

But, for as good as Keen's performance is, Laura represents a serious missed opportunity for Logan. From her first appearances in the compound, Xavier challenges Logan by asking him "doesn't she remind you of someone?" Xavier is trying to get Logan to make the leap that Laura is his daughter and he should see in her his previous, feral, qualities. But Dafne Keen is presented with a high brow and intense eyes and fans of the X-Men films would have no trouble seeing that she could remind Logan of Jean Grey. Yet, in Logan, the Transigen documents claim that Laura was created from James Howlett's DNA, not a hybrid of Logan and Jean Grey. This is especially disappointing because X-Men fans know that the mutant gene is passed through the father, so how Logan's X-chromosome was used to make a mutant daughter makes no scientific sense. Logan's writers could have easily eliminated this argument and given an added layer to Laura - and Logan through his conflict over taking care of her! - by making her a hybrid child of Logan and Jean Grey.

In a similar fashion, James Mangold and his co-writers seem to lack a real understanding of how and why people use bounty hunters and they gut the originality of Logan in the process. Logan begins as a mood piece that explores survivors of a genocide when a bounty hunter comes into Logan's life. Pierce is employed by Dr. Rice, who is shown in Gabriela's footage experimenting at Transigen on the mutant children he has created. And he is used very well there and Richard E. Grant was wonderfully cast for him. But then he comes into the field and becomes a painfully generic comic book style villain. And the kicker of it is that it is so thoroughly unnecessary.

Dr. Rice is credited by Pierce as being the architect of the mutant genocide. He succeeded where Trask failed and he has spent the years since virtually wiping out mutants making his own mutants for controlled mutant soldiers. He is a monster. He is a monster who works in Mexico and has a free pass to enter the United States . . . only Canada (in Logan) sees him as a criminal and the subjects of his experiments as viable life forms worthy of asylum. Here's the point of the problem with Dr. Rice; there is nothing that can be done in Logan that would justify putting him in the field and menacing his life. Dr. Rice is not in prison, he is not being hunted by an international tribunal; he freely works in Mexico, comes to the United States, has direct authority over his private little army of bounty hunters . . . all this after wiping out most of mutantkind. So, if Dr. Rice is responsible for killing (for example, it is not stated in Logan) Rogue, Jean Grey, Mystique, Storm, Beast and Magneto, his one death cannot balance even a fraction of the lives he took and there is no real emotional catharsis to his death or even any menace that his life is put in. So why bother with it?! The only reason - outside the fact that he is a comic book villain conceit - is that the writers do not understand the nature of those who employ bounty hunters. Dr. Rice relies upon Pierce and X-24 to get the job done for him and he has, presumably, survived as long as he has by keeping distance from his experiments. There is nothing in Logan that justifies him coming into the field.

So, Dr. Rice falls into the trap of a generic comic book villain when Logan already has Pierce as a compelling enough proxy for the scenes that were not focused on man vs. society and man vs. nature (age) . . . or even man vs. himself type conflicts. And in that way, Logan continues to disappoint. The moment Charles Xavier accepts an invitation from the Munson's to go back to their home, Logan takes a straight like into Derivativeville that every fan of the X-Men Saga will see coming. We wait for those pursuing Logan, Charles and Laura to catch up to them at the Munson's because we saw the exact same thing happen when Logan was rescued by the senior citizen couple in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (reviewed here!). Between that and the common conceit of "if a bullet is introduced in the first act . . .," Logan plays toward the painfully predictable at all of the opportunities it had to truly surprise viewers.

And that's where it ends. Logan had potential and it is set up very well to be a well-done, truly unsettling film that explored consequences, end-of-life issues and last-minute redemption for a man who never should have been a father; a super-hero film that mentions easements and political asylum. But instead of playing to those aspects, Logan becomes oppressive and harsh in ways that we come to expect and it ends up saying nothing truly new to the audience.

For other movies currently in theaters, please check out my reviews of:
The Great Wall
War On Everyone
The Founder
Underworld: Blood Wars
La La Land

3.5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Potential For Sleeper Hit: The Wolverine (Largely) Satisfies!

The Good: Acting, Character development, Decent direction
The Bad: Moments where the film tries for big, superhero conflicts
The Basics: With The Wolverine, Hugh Jackman, James Mangold, Mark Bomback, Scott Frank, and Christopher McQuarrie once again make the loner mutant the coolest super hero on the block!


As Summer Blockbuster Season reaches its midpoint, it is easy to feel a sense of burnout. After all, almost every week the moviegoing public is bombarded with an advertising campaign for the next big film calculated to win the weekend’s box office race before the next behemoth is released to usurp it. This summer is an especially crowded one and one imagines that the advertising budget for these blockbusters could feed most of the world for an entire year. So, it says something when one of the films virtually guaranteed to win its weekend takes a quieter approach to marketing, which is the case with the latest X-Men spinoff movie: The Wolverine.

The Wolverine returns Hugh Jackman to the role that it seems like he was born and trained to play and his return to the part of Logan is anything but obvious and familiar. In fact, for the bulk of The Wolverine, Jackman seems content to show off his moody depths and a range more akin to his performance in Les Miserables (reviewed here!) than X-Men (reviewed here!). Rather smartly, director James Mangold lets Jackman run for a while in the more cerebral direction and the script by Mark Bomback, Scott Frank, and Christopher McQuarrie gives Jackman and Mangold plenty of opportunities to build a sense of isolation in Logan that plays well to an audience who wants more than simply huge fight scenes and superheroic displays of power.

In fact, The Wolverine works best when it avoids the hyperbolic displays common in action films and the superhero genre. Sadly, the movie degenerates into that, but not before it is largely satisfying as a ninja (ronin? I’m not exactly up on my Japanese lone warrior terminology) quest style film. It is worth noting up front that I did not loathe X-Men Origins: Wolverine (reviewed here!) the way most critics and fans did and I have not read the Frank Miller books upon which The Wolverine gleaned some of its important ideas. This is a rather pure review of the film The Wolverine unencumbered by notions of what it ought to be from the source material.

Opening in World War II, Logan is in Japan where he saves the life of a young soldier, Yashida. Yashida promises to repay Logan’s kindness, but Logan’s life progresses through solitude and pain to the near future (following X-Men III: The Last Stand, reviewed here!) where he has once more split himself off from society. Even in his isolation and the guilt he feels over killing the woman he loved, Logan is not able to disappear; he is tracked by Yukio. Yukio brings Logan to Japan where the now very old, very successful, and near-death Yashida is prepared to make good on his promise to Logan.

Yashida has devised a method to make Logan mortal and when it appears that the process is successful, against his will, Logan finds himself in Japan experiencing all the anxieties one might expect when an invulnerable man is suddenly vulnerable and alone. Unfortunately for Logan and Yukio, Yashida’s methods have been exploited by a dangerous villain, Viper. While Logan no longer wanted immortality, Viper and several others did and the secrets Logan possesses make him a hunted man at a time when Viper might just be able to bury him. As Logan struggles to protect Yashida's granddaughter, who is hunted for the inheritance she will receive, the Wolverine begins to feel again and move beyond Jean Grey.

While The Wolverine ends up pairing Logan and Mariko together for the bulk of Logan’s tenure in Japan, the film never degenerates into feeling like any sort of lame buddy action movie. Instead, for the bulk of the movie, The Wolverine focuses on Logan’s character journey. He begins at a very natural point of feeling guilty and as he protects himself and Yukio, and later himself and Mariko, he fights for a sense of redemption that plays well considering how easy it could be to make Wolverine into a mindless brute.

The Wolverine in fact only falls down when it relegates the growling, moody mutant to the role of action hero able to fight a small army of ninjas on his own. Even in those sequences that stretch the reality of the rest of the movie, though, The Wolverine maintains decent special effects and a focus on Logan. The special effects succeed because director James Mangold gives the viewer time enough to see them and they respond to a realistic set of physics.

The internal conflict that Logan is wrestling with falls away as Viper rises to the forefront in the latter half of the film. To its credit, The Wolverine does not try to overwhelm viewers with star power. Outside Russian cinema, Svetlana Khodchenkova who plays Viper is a virtual unknown. To her credit, in physical presence, emoting the lines, and body language, Khodchenkova holds her own with Hugh Jackman. She may not be given the choice lines, but she plays the part of Viper well enough to be credible.

In a similar fashion, Rila Fukushima assumes the role of Yukio in a way that makes it easy to forget that Anna Paquin could have been filling the sidekick niche as Rogue for most of the movie. Fukushima has decent on-screen chemistry and charisma to play off Jackman and make their scenes together work.

Ultimately, The Wolverine is a quieter, more character-centered journey for Logan and it puts most of the decisions in his hands, as opposed to the machinations of every villain still standing in the post-X-Men III universe. That is a refreshing change of pace in a summer filled with bloated blockbusters moving so fast that the directors and studios hope one does not notice how flimsy the plots are. That makes The Wolverine well worth watching . . . more than once.

For other movies based upon the Marvel comic books, please check out my reviews of:
The Avengers
Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance
Captain America: The First Avenger
X-Men: First Class
Thor
Iron Man 2
The Incredible Hulk
Spider-Man 3
Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer
Blade: Trinity
Elektra
Daredevil

7/10

For other film reviews, please check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Walk The Line To A Captivating Biography

The Good: Excellent acting, Good character development, Strong pacing/plot, Good musical direction
The Bad: Resolution is not so much a resolution but an end
The Basics: With exceptional acting and a compelling dramatic story to tell, Walk The Line follows the career, personal life, and awkward romance of one of America's musical icons.


I'm not a country music fan, but when I listen to country and enjoy it, it is almost exclusively classic country. Johnny Cash is one of the artists I've listened to and enjoyed . Walk The Line is the recent biography of Johnny Cash charting his life and musicmaking with special emphasis on his relationship with June Carter.

John Cash, as a young boy, loses his brother in an accident with an industrial saw. His father, the emotionally distant Ray Cash, vocally asks god why the divine didn't take John instead. John grows up, joins the Air Force and goes to Germany, returns home and starts a family and he begins to follow his dream of recording music. When Cash begins to record his own, deeply personal songs, his career takes off and he begins a rocky career that parallels June Carter, a beautiful young country singer/comedian who runs in the same circles as Cash. As unresolved issues from Johnny's past drive him to despair, drugs and infidelity, his career takes turns unpleasant and real.

Walk The Line sells Johnny Cash as a poor man who pulled himself up and succeeded by being a true and individual artist. In fact, most of his professional complications come when he forsakes his individuality - he starts doing drugs with rock stars when Elvis and his people get him into them. Cash's infidelity spins out of that and it's not something heavily explored in this film.

What is a driving force throughout the movie is Johnny's attempts to get his father to recognize him and his talent. Walk The Line explores Johnny's deep-seated inferiority complex because his father Ray is withholding of even basic love and respect. It makes for a compelling character study and the scenes between Ray and Johnny are great on a character and cinematic level.

Similarly, Walk The Line is essentially the love story of Johnny and June Carter. That's misleading; it's the backstory to their love story. With something like a biography of two famous people like Johnny and June it is not ruining the surprise to indicate that they fall in love. However, Walk The Line does not deal with the two in love so much as it builds up to it.

Then the movie ends. The movie ending on the high note of the moment Johnny and June actually fall for one another completely is acceptable and it's a fine point to end. Far more problematic is the fact that there is no resolution in the Ray/Johnny plot/character conflict. Throughout the movie, Johnny's life takes drastic turns based on stimulus from his father - usually the withholding of acknowledgment that Johnny's life has any intrinsic value - and it is disturbing that the viewer is not granted the chance to see or learn how that circumstance resolved itself.

Robert Patrick, perhaps best known for Terminator 2: Judgment Day (reviewed here!) or the latter seasons of The X-Files, plays Ray Cash. Wow. Robert Patrick is one of those actors who exploded on the scene (T2) then disappeared from the mainstream attention for a long time and worked his way back into something impressive. The years of work have paid off; Patrick is brilliant as Ray, eliciting shivers from viewers for his icy portrayal of the wounded patriarch. Patrick's cold stare accents his tight-lipped delivery of lines in a compelling fashion that makes him rule every scene he is in.

Patrick plays brilliantly off lead Joaquin Phoenix. Phoenix takes on the swagger, the affect of Johnny Cash so perfectly that when I watched documentary footage of Cash after viewing Walk The Line, I was impressed by the similarities. Phoenix is given the task, not so much of creating a character but, of replicating an established personality and making him understandable and as close to universally liked as possible. He succeeds admirably. And he does a great job with the vocals throughout Walk The Line, recreating the sound of Johnny Cash. That's essential to convincing the audience of his worth.

It is Reese Witherspoon who rules Walk The Line, though. Who would have guessed that the star of Legally Blonde (reviewed here!) could righteously portray such a strong and direct celebrity?! Witherspoon deserved every acting award she received for this role. She is charming when she presents Carter's on-stage persona, deep in the private moments in scenes she shares quietly with Phoenix and expressive throughout. I've never seen Witherspoon so graceful and controlled in a film before, but her discipline pays off and she makes a faithful portrayal of June Carter.

Walk The Line has been wrongly billed as a musical. It is not. There is a heavy emphasis on music in this movie, but characters do not break into song to express feelings they are not otherwise feeling, exposit plot or move the story along. This is a biography and a drama and it is likely to be enjoyed by anyone who likes a good character-driven story. After seeing Walk The Line, it's hard to imagine anyone else will recreate a Cash/Carter story again soon; the bar is set so high.

For other biography films, please be sure to check out my reviews of:
The Life Of Emile Zola
Elizabeth
Capote

8/10

For other film reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the films I have reviewed.

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Another Dismal Summer Comedy, Knight And Day Is A Fast Ride Nowhere.

The Good: One or two lines, Cameron Diaz has her moments.
The Bad: Largely un-funny, Terrible dialogue, Very choreographed sense of action, Trite plot
The Basics: As one of the least funny comedies and least original action-adventure thrillers to hit theaters lately, Knight And Day is just not worth watching.


Summer Blockbuster Season is a time when two things tend to happen in American cinema. First, giant, expensive special-effects laden films are released that have the ability to dazzle the audience, sell popcorn and encourage people to shell out increasingly ridiculous prices for movie tickets. The second thing that happens is the movie theaters become dumping grounds for increasingly stupid movies that do surprisingly well at the box office, no doubt buoyed by people who are already at the mall and cannot get into the sold-out showing of the movie they truly want to see. Guess which one Knight And Day is?

Knight And Day is a particularly troubled action-comedy, a rising genre that seems to be spurred on from the success writers and directors have found in inserting clever one-liners into their action flicks. As I contemplated how bad Knight And Day was following the screening of it I attended, I did a little research and discovered that at various times, seven different screenwriters were involved in rewrites of the original script. This, I suspect, ought to have raised some red flags for the producers and financiers. That little nugget, oddly, did not surprise me as the movie seemed like it was cobbled together and lacked a cohesive narrative voice.

Knight And Day also lacks a genuine sense of humor, a panache for original action and characters one might empathize with. At least once in the movie, I sat and thought "Didn't they do this on Scarecrow And Mrs. King?" I haven't seen Scarecrow And Mrs. King in decades, but watching this movie, I found myself wishing I were watching a cinematic remake of that implausible television series. The current Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz vehicle does no one any great favors and one suspects that it will quickly be buried by vastly more successful, more worthwhile films that at least hide their lack of originality better.

Roy Miller is a secret agent who is doing his best to have a life outside his job. He meets June Havens by stalking her through an airport and warning her not to get onto a plane. But she does and once there things seem to be off to a promising start with her when his work intervenes. Miller is forced to kill the handful of other people on the plane, who are all killers out to get him and, possibly, June. The end of their first encounter comes with Miller needing to flee in order to protect a source of great power (a perpetual motion machine, essentially). Dragging June along with him, he attempts to carry out a mission which seems to be of some importance to national security. But Miller is erratic and soon June is questioning his sanity and his legitimacy as a secret agent.

As Miller and June flee trained killers and other adversaries, Miller tries to show June the ropes and keep her alive. But just as June becomes unsure of how much she can trust Miller and what he has told her, Miller soon has cause to believe that June is not all she appears to be and as the bullets fly, they both try to stay alive and learn the truth.

Right off the bat, Knight And Day is an erratic movie, but it definitely treads far more toward action-adventure than comedy. As a result, there is a mundane quality to the work that seems like exactly what it is: choreographed. For two people who have been top-billed in action-adventure films before, Tom Cruise (Mission: Impossible) and Cameron Diaz (Charlie's Angels) seem to have no real flair for making the genre seem new. Cruise is characteristically stiff and efficient in many of the scenes where he has to run, jump and appear to shoot guns. Director James Mangold similarly seems to have nothing fresh to infuse into the action-adventure genre.

Amid the wisecracks and one-liners, which come frequently when things are not blowing up or Miller and June are running away from obstacles or toward new complications, it quickly occurs to the audience that they are not laughing. There is a desperate grab to find the catchphrase in Knight And Day which makes the whole adventure seem somewhat cliche. Ultimately, the writing does not stick and there are no definitive sequences or lines that actually stand out after the movie is over.

As far as character goes, the movie is largely devoid of it. June clearly becomes attracted to Miller pretty much because he is the proximate guy. There is a buddy comedy feel to the movie and the way it develops into a romance feels forced. In this regard, Knight And Day is problematic for either the casting, the direction or the writing (or all three) in that Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz have less than no chemistry on screen in their roles of Miller and June. Instead, they play off one another more like an odd couple without the spunk and quick retorts that come from Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon presenting Neil Simon's words. Yes, I just said it: Matthau and Lemmon have more on-screen chemistry than Cruise and Diaz do in this movie!

There is a "mistaken identity" feel to much of Knight And Day and the viewer is supposed to wonder if Miller is truly a secret agent, if June is truly just an innocent civilian and if Miller's mission is truly one that is supposed to save the world. But with June being dragged along whining about circumstances, it does not take long before the viewer does not care. It is impossible to become emotionally invested in these characters and the movie feels more like it is dragging the viewer through the convoluted identity issues and plot twists than it is making either a coherent story or an enjoyable character journey.

The movie's only redeeming factor is that Cameron Diaz manages to land it at times. As June Havens, Cameron Diaz has to scream, look afraid and hold tight to Tom Cruise's Miller. Cruise might be stiff, but there are moments in the first half of the film where Diaz seems realistically scared, confused and imperiled. One might not care much about June, even with her asides to her sister (played by Maggie Grace) which try to flesh her character out, but Diaz plays the part well enough to buy her act initially.

Tom Cruise gives viewers nothing we haven't seen from him before. This is action-adventure Tom Cruise running around spouting lines with an enthusiasm of Tom Cruise on The Oprah Winfrey Show. The combination is more unsettling than anything, but it just seems like he is reading lines much of the film.

Ultimately, Knight And Day is one of those films that tries to be a clever, genre-bending movie but flops out as a bad comedy that utilizes what talent is present in it poorly. It's an easy movie for everyone to skip, especially after the banality of Summer Blockbuster Season.

For other action-adventures with a romantic comedy feel to them, please check out my reviews of:
Excess Baggage
Land Of The Lost
Did You Hear About The Morgans?

2/10

For other film reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.



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