Knight and Day (2010) Review

rating: ****

the story: A CIA operative has been set up, and in the process of clearing his name his life becomes entangled with an unlikely accomplice.

review: I will readily admit, until a rewatch a few weeks back I was as convinced as anyone that Knight and Day was nothing much writing about. In 2010 Tom Cruise was scrambling to put his career back on track, and when I saw this particular effort in theaters I thought it was a particularly desperate byproduct. I even dismissed costar Cameron Diaz, who has been a favorite since her film debut in The Mask, as forgettable.

I don’t believe any of that anymore.

If anything, Knight and Day has the potential of being a modern classic. It’s lighthearted and flippant concerning its surface action elements. The whole point is calculated screwball, which in older Hollywood days was the holy grail of romantic comedy. It’s a unique movie in Cruise’s career, which has in the decade or so since its release relied ever more heavily on straight action.

It’s really a waltz between Cruise and Diaz; eventually the tables are turned and it’s Diaz in control rather than the character who seems to have been one step ahead and her to be dozens of steps behind. 

And there’s plenty of support around them, too, something of an embarrassment. Maggie Grace, officially wrapping up her time on Lost, is there in one of her many tiny supporting roles (she’s also in the Taken movies, although you’d be forgiven to assume they’re all just Liam Neeson brandishing his action jones). Peter Sarsgaard (nearly always a villain, alas!), Viola Davis, Paul Dano actually feeling like he’s perfectly cast for a change, even Gal Gadot!

The director in charge of all this is the perennially criminally underrated James Mangold, who has proven himself a master of modern cinema. In fact, restoring Knight and Day, and this is not why I choose to champion it now but it’s a nice benefit, as a treasure would add an additional feather to his cap (Walk the Line, 3:10 to Yuma, Logan, Ford v Ferrari).

Too often today we reduce the art of moviemaking to…whatever’s not the box office blockbuster. There’s a huge tradition and a wide range of material out there. Recognizing achievements is a fine way to encourage the breadth of the medium to continue pursuing that range, rather than allowing it to narrow to “blockbuster” and “art film.”

That and acknowledging that movie stars continue to deliver, regardless of whatever happens in their personal life.

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby (2014)

rating: ****

the story: A marriage is interrupted by the death of their child.

what it's all about: I will admit, the thing that originally brought me to The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby was the fact that there were three versions of the movie: Him, Her, and Them.  Technically, Him is the original incarnation of the movie.  Director Ned Benson conceived of Her when his one-time girlfriend Jessica Chastain asked for her character's backstory to be fleshed out.  Then Them was created by combining the two other versions.  I would submit that Them is the best version of the story, the most artful, but it's certainly worth watching all three, and for different reasons.

The wife, the eponymous character, is played by Chastain, while the husband is James McAvoy.  The three versions of the story are best described this way: Him is by far the most open, viewer-friendly one, while Her is much more of an indy film; Them, by combining both, turns it into an art film.  Him has Bill Hader as its best selling point, broadening the story with his casual irreverence, and making it a fun experience.  Her has Viola Davis and William Hurt (Davis doesn't really appear in Him; clearly she's heard in her classroom mostly thanks to her prominence in Her; Hurt doesn't appear in Him at all), who ground Chastain in challenging conversations, the only way we get a sense of how she views the world.  McAvoy also has Ciaran Hines, in much the same role as Hurt, and in that way we get a sense that what originally brought McAvoy and Chastain together was running away from their lives, so that it's the same problem, in reverse, that they're dealing with throughout the story.  And why that ending is so appropriate.  (Katherine Waterston, later featured in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, has a small role in Her.)

It's a poetic, elegiac experience, concerning how we struggle with life, how it sometimes impossible to truly understand someone else, how flippant and rude behavior is sometimes not what it seems, more of a defense mechanism, something we know intrinsically but can rarely admit.  It's a long series of awkward conversations, either happening or being avoided, and the struggle to comprehend either how we grow or that we're still doing it.

So it's fascinating to me on many levels.  Most often, when there are multiple versions of a movie, it's because of studio interference.  Benson chose this risky, deliberate path for his first and to date only film.  No doubt it was asking a lot for audiences to try and choose between them.  Even critics would've had to demonstrate unusual levels of concentration to have understood the scope of his achievement.  I think everyone came out looking good having decided to make this movie, in all its incarnations.