Knight and Day is a difficult movie to define.  It is equal parts screwball comedy and action with elements of romance and espionage thriller sprinkled in.  Director James Mangold aims to let the audience in on the fun directly and the results are a mixed bag.

Knight and Day Sees A Return to Form for Star Tom Cruise

On one hand, you have two stars with genuine chemistry between them.  Tom Cruise movies used to be an event, but his star has dimmed a bit in recent years.  Here he plays rogue CIA agent Roy Miller, a man who has fallen out of favor with the agency over what has been deemed to be behavior contradictory to the best interests of the organization.  Cameron Diaz is everyday girl June Havens, an innocent bystander who gets caught up in the web of intrigue as an unknown pawn between Miller and the CIA agents who are tracking him.

Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz fire away in Knight and Day.

A third group of sinister types are also in pursuit of Miller, for he is deemed to control a prototype energy battery that is as small as a normal AA Duracell, but can power an entire city with its efficiency.  Miller has the battery and everyone else wants it, so that it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.  Whose hands are truly wrong, becomes the twist beyond the action in figuring out this cat and mouse game.

Cameron Diaz Lends Notable Star Wattage to the Cast of Knight and Day

Cruise leaves a trail of bodies in his wake in broad daylight, so believability must be thrown out the door right away, but that doesn’t necessarily detract from the film’s effectiveness or lack thereof.  Mangold opens the film in an airport, and from plane to train to automobile destruction follows in this Bond-esqe actioner.

Cruise and Diaz run/ride with the bulls in Knight and Day.

Miller is a wild card with a good heart (it seems) but Havens can never know for sure.  While June gets swept up as a kidnapped pawn of sorts, it is unclear as to why she is along for the ride.  However, her feelings and desire for fun certainly play a part in that.  But what sane woman would want to entrench herself with a potentially unstable CIA operative who literally leaves dozens of bodies dead littered around her on multiple occasions?  Such is the type of film we are dealing with.

Director James Mangold Might Have Been the Wrong Call to Lead Knight and Day

It’s a messy and inconsistent script that follows its leads through several continents and locations that cause the whole enterprise to tumble.   Mangold, who made his name with dramatic films like Girl, Intterupted and Walk The Line, might not have been the right choice to helm here.  It is unclear whether the lo-tech digital enhancements are merely there to aid in the whole feeling of cheesiness or if they are simply a result of an insufficient post-production budget.  One may never know or care.

Knight and Day is not a bad film experience, but it’s not a strong one either.  It is actually a decent time at the movies if you check your sense of reality at the door.  Mangold’s film is geared toward the date-going crowd, which it marginally satisfies, without breaking any significant ground in the process.  It is a unique film for this day and age, in some ways it feels like a throwback to the Cannonball Run days, but it just isn’t as successful in its execution as one would hope for.  See it if interested, pass if on the fringe.

E! News Daily (TV) has just reported that Tom Cruise confirmed to their Mark Malkin that a Les Grossman movie is indeed in the works, something that I speculated on last week after seeing videos (here and here) of him surface for the MTV Movie Awards.  Cruise’s Tropic Thunder alter-ego, a movie mogul extraordinaire, has been a hit with audiences (it appears) and has if nothing else, gained my respect. Now, I would like for him to disappear until said movie potentially surfaces, only because we’ve seen a bit much from Les in the last week. (I get burned out quick.)  Take this news with a grain load of salt though, as there is nothing confirmed, nothing listed as in production, or any other significant notes of such on the matter at this time.  In the meantime, here is (hopefully) the last Les Grossman video we will be subjected to til much closer to a potential film.  He gets busy with Jennifer Lopez on last week’s MTV Movie Awards.  LAte.

I just posted this Tom Cruise MTV Movie Awards video promo last week, in which Tom’s Les takes a shot at a young Tom Cruise which led me to openly wonder whether I should have even been aware that the MTV Movie Awards still existed. Alas, Tom Cruise doing these Les Grossman promos is almost enough to get me to start paying attention.  Note that I said, almost. I don’t think I have seen an MTV Movie Awards show in its entirety in a decade, if ever.  Still, getting Cruise to send up Twilight luminaries Robert Pattison (pretty funny) and Taylor Lautner (not as much) is a brilliant marketing move, something that the block M has been pretty good at throughout the years. So here are the latest videos from Tom’s super Hollywood movie mogul. I think they’re funny enough to post and as I said before, I respect Cruise for doing this and at least attempting to stay relevant to the younger generation.

Could Cruise have a possible full-length spin-off with this character?  Hell, MacGruber got made.  I am interested to see how well the upcoming Mr. and Mrs. Smith knockoff Knight and Day does for him, as I think it might be one of his last gasps at being a big time star. It better at least hammer on the similarly themed Killers, just sayin’. Now I have to go wash my hands and check to see if I got my “hood pass” revoked for posting anything with Pattison and Lautner in the title.  Sellout. “Get back, you don’t know me like that.” Enjoy.

Tom Cruise’s alter-ego Les Grossman, a big wig studio exec from Tropic Thunder has reappeared for a promo for the upcoming MTV Movie Awards (who knew that MTV still existed?).  Now, Grossman’s original appearance in “Thunder” was much-ballyhooed (deservedly so in my opinion, virtually the only positive thing in a piss-poor film), and his brief scene here is spot on.  Grossman rips himself, err Tom Cruise, in this little video below.  Yes Grossman was apparently on the set of Cruise’s breakout 1982 film Risky Business.  Check out the short spot and holla if you feel it.  I know that Risky Business has been parodied to death but I respect Cruise for doing this little bit, shows some range.

The last time I saw Paul Dano was in 2007′s There Will Be Blood, where I thought he was brilliant (though Tarantino thinks otherwise). He’s been in a few smaller things since then, but I have yet to see any of them. Today, he’s positioned himself in something higher profile again. Dano has joined the cast of an untitled (formerly titled Wichita) action-comedy, to be directed by James Mangold (Walk the Line), along with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz.

“Variety” describes the film to be about “a federal agent, portrayed by Cruise, who finds himself teamed with a wholesome and upbeat Midwestern woman, played by Diaz. Dano will play a charming but mysterious scientist whose invention is at the center of Cruise and Diaz’s chase.”

From that plot description, you’d probably be hard-pressed to figure out where the “comedy” part of the film comes in, but one assumes it’s there. Dano of course is no stranger to that element after Little Miss Sunshine and hopefully this will grant him some more exposure to the masses, because I think he deserves it.

One of the biggest box office successes from just a few years ago that seems to have vanished from the map for whatever reason was the 2005 Steven Spielberg/Tom Cruise collabo, War of the Worlds. It’s not out on Blu-ray, nor is it seemingly even being worked on. I thought the movie was pretty damn cool, even if there were a few things in it that kind of nag at me. That being said, it contained what was easily my favorite scene from any film that year, the tripod attack. The sound of the phasers. The Saving Private Ryan-like visuals set in an urban environment. It was all so beautiful to me and still is.

The story revolves around Ray Ferrier (Cruise), who is in charge of looking after his two children while their mother goes on a trip with her new husband. That’s when the war of the worlds between humans and an alien race gets it on.

This scene takes place fairly early in the film. A large mass of ominous clouds have just shot razor-like lightning beams toward the earth. The lightning worked as an electromagnetic pulse, knocking out all battery-operated objects. I’m never a stickler for such things, but the video camera somehow being operable in this scene really troubles me. However, it’s full of great action, aurally and visually. The clip could probably have been cut two minutes earlier, but oh well. All the better. Enjoy.

As “Michael Mann Week” comes to an end here at The Film Nest, we want to bring you one last look at what might now be considered his last “great” movie. Earlier, we brought you the classic shootout in downtown L.A. from 1995′s Heat. It’s probably the most famous scene from Mann’s ouevre. Today, I wanted to go a little less mainstream for you. It’s a short scene from one of Mann’s most underrated films, 2004′s Collateral. At the moment, it’s one of the least loved films in our sidebar poll, so I figured I’d spread a little love on it.

Tom Cruise plays Vincent, a contract killer assigned to dispose of five people in the Los Angeles area who played witness to a crime committed by his employer. He hops into a cab driven by Max (Jamie Foxx), just on the job “temporarily.” Vincent asks Max to be his personal chauffeur for the night, and when the prospect of doubling Max’s pay is offered, Max reluctantly accepts. Little does he know, he has been hired to drive Vincent around to the homes of each of the witnesses while Vincent does his business and kills them. Immediately reluctant to have any role in this, Max tries to back out, much to Vincent’s dismay.

In this short, but sweet scene, Vincent has been dropped out off at the house of victim number two and ties Max’s hands to the steering wheel so he won’t drive away. Max honks the horn loudly, trying to garner a passerby’s attention to help him. He doesn’t get the help he desires. Enjoy.

Since that scene was so short and this is the last Mann-related post of the week, I’m leaving you with a little bonus. This is the club scene from the film where Vincent performs his special brand of magic, played out in front of Paul Oakenfold’s “Ready, Set, Go.”

I could’ve also chosen Javier Bardem’s small, but pivotal scene. “Pedro del Negro!” However at this point, you should just see the movie. It’s great.

As James Cameron said during his Oscar speech 12 years ago, “I’m king of the world,” can now be applied to J.J. Abrams. After creating hit shows “Felicity,” “Alias,” “Lost” and now “Fringe,” Abrams moved into the film world with Mission: Impossible III (by far the best of the series) and injected the saggy sad-sack sci-fi franchise with Star Trek.

Abrams is fully involved in developing Star Trek 2 (or is that 12?) at the moment, but he’s still found time to hook up with old pal Tom Cruise (not the homeboy Tom Kruse, inventor of the Hoveround that you see in infomercials, who like Uwe Boll is the only true genius in the whole business) for Mission: Impossible IV.

Abrams won’t be handling directorial duty on M:I IV, however and instead will be co-producing with Cruise. Cruise will still star, but another director waits in the wings. Who do you think it should be? Do you think David Fincher (at one point ready to do M:I III) could be coerced into it? I don’t believe he’s in production on anything at the moment. They’re eying a 2011 release.

Since I thought M:I III was good, I guess I’m fine with a fourth go-round, but one and two were pure garbage. How could we ever forget Cruise kicking a gun laying flat on the sand STRAIGHT UP into his hand? Very feeble, John Woo. Very feeble.

For the first time since the acting duo worked together on Cameron Crowe’s 2001 film Vanilla Sky (Abre Los Ojos remake), Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz will join forces in Wichita.  An action-comedy that is to be directed by James Mangold (Walk The Line), the actors have recently seen their stars dim sum (pun intended) in recent years with various couch-jumping episodes or poor choices in boyfriends (maybe I am reaching there).  Tommy’s career got a boost with a cameo in Tropic Thunder and last year’s Valkyrie did solid numbers at the box office.  Diaz on the other hand hasn’t led anything to success on her own in a spell, so this should be an interesting move to see how well they can interact together in a film that could have a significant stake in the path of their careers from here.  Getthebigpicture shares more:

… (Mangold) will direct a script that has been thoroughly worked over, according to Variety, and 20th Century Fox is targeting a summer 2010 release.  Cruise would play a spy who “pops in and out of the life of a single woman,” and we would assume that woman to be Diaz.

It’s difficult to tell what might come of this.  Is it a smaller movie with Oscar potential?  Probably not, due to the action-comedy slant.  Is it a bigger budget movie due to the stars with a director who has never helmed action before?  This seems a bit more likely.  Also, it could fall in between the two which makes anything a possibility.  Not much to get fired up about but at least the teaming of quality actors and director is inspired.  Don’t underestimate Diaz as an actress either.  She has held her own in many-a-role including the aforementioned “Sky” and Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday where IMO she first earned respect.  We’ll keep tabs on things from here, feel free to interject your opinions on the matter.

Wrapping up the week, we have found some more interesting tidbits to share with you in our Film News Daily.

The biggest deal of the week is that we added the Bruno trailer yesterday.  It looks every bit as funny as Borat.  Fooking hilarious!

Also, see our The Hangover trailer with Mike Tyson.  We have seen the movie, our review is dropping soon.

Rabbit Hole has had Nicole Kidman attached for some time but now [Production Weekly] reports that Aaron Eckhart will join her.  This is supposed to be a major tear-jerker (the movie, not the news – and not because Two-Face is not Eckhart’s character).

Little Fockers appears to be the next project on the horizon for Paul Weitz. This should be the final installment in the comedic series where Meet The Parents was good and Meet The Fockers was not. [Rope of Silicon]

Stringer Bell, bka Idris Elba, and Star Trek‘s Queen Uhura, Zoe Saldana, become part of DC Comics’ The Losers, along with Jeffrey Dean Morgan of Watchmen infamy. [Screenrant] has more goods on the prospects.

[MTV] has more goods on David Cronenberg’s The Matarese Circle which is supposed to star both Denzel Washington and Tom Cruise.  That is one of the biggest star pairings in years as far as I can tell, but Cronenberg has more quirky tastes than most blockbusters would allow.  This one is interesting.

Vin Diesel and Chris Pine are officially in for Green Lantern.  [Moviehole] actually says check that.  Pine is close to signing for the lead in “Lantern” and Diesel is looking to play “Sub-Mariner” in another comic property film.

Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale) has added Ben Stiller to his untitled film that is underway in LA.  Stiller is doing drama this time (a welcome departure, I think) says [Film School Rejects] and Rhys Ifans is also on board.

Sex And The City 2 gets an official release date of May 28, 2010.  Mark your calenders.  Or don’t. I’m still hopeful it will be re-cast and re-titled, “More Sex, Less City.”

[ShockTilYouDrop] has info on Scott Nicholson’s “The Home” book adaptation turned film.  It’s a horror novel in which experimental treatment on chidlren brings back the spirits of the titular house”s former residents.