FC Barcelona Sport

I’ve been in love with the Tom Cruise in movies since I fell in love with Top Gun years ago, and it broke my heart while I was in college and in star began to tarnish. Thankfully for me, his star has been glowing a little more in the past few years, first Les Grossman and Valkyrie and now it can continue with Knight and Day. Knight and Day is the kind of Tom Cruise movie that I adore watching, and for the life of me I cannot figure out why this movie is not burning up the box offices. Knight and Day is a spy romantic comedy for lack of a better description of the genre, and it works on every level.

June Havens accidently gets caught up in the path of government agent Roy Miller, who is trying to protect young genius Simon from a rogue agent – a rogue agent who has pegged Miller as the bad seed and has the agency tracking him, and now June, down. While June is the resistant passenger on Roy’s journey she begins to fall for Roy even though she’s never sure if his tale of conspiracy is a lie or the truth.

The reason this film works so well is because of James Mangold. This director has put to huge stars together with Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise and yet neither outshines the other, and their chemistry is fun to watch whether they are sparring verbally with one another or being attacked.

I’ve complained a great deal about directors that can’t handle tonal shifts in their films, and Mangold deserves praise because the tonal shifts in Knight and Day are imperceptible. As a viewer you go from laughing to anticipating onscreen gunfire without ever noticing that the mood suddenly changed in the film, simply because the writer, actors and Mangold did their job well – so well it looks easy and forgettable.

This movie is built around the chemistry between Cruise & Diaz. As a director I don’t know if I would have put the two onscreen together simply because I would have been afraid one star would eclipse the other, but thankfully that doesn’t happen here. Even though the tale is told from June’s perspective Roy is never sidelined or forgotten, and Roy’s character never makes June’s seem less important. This is a marriage of perfect characters and actors and the film is much better for it.

As I stated, Knight and Day is a movie that makes me happy to be a Tom Cruise fan again. This film is a throw-back to adult comedies, action films and stories. It’s a good film that masquerades as a popcorn film and the best part about it is that Knight and Day is fun, and makes you want to spend another two hours at the movies just so you can see it again.

Director: James Mangold
Writer: Patrick O’Neill
Roy Miller: Tom Cruise
June Havens: Cameron Diaz
Fitzgerald: Peter Sarsgaard
Antonio: Jordi Molla
Director George: Viola Davis
Simon Feck: Paul Dano
Rodney: Marc Blucas
April Havens: Maggie Grace

June: The pilots are dead.
Miller: Yeah, they've been shot.
June: By who?
Miller: By me. No, actually, I shot the first pilot then he accidentally shot the second pilot. It's just one of those things.

I adore Luc Besson and the fact that he no longer directs does make me a bit sad; luckily he still chooses to write and because of that I have movies like Taken. Taken really is Luc Besson without Besson at the helm.

What is nice about Taken is that it is an amazing action movie, but before the action sets in it manages to set up our characters and our plot so that we actually manage to connect with the main characters before the bone crushing sets in. Taken is everything it promises in its trailer to be.

Bryan is a recently retired government operative who is now living in LA so that he can make up for lost time with his teenage daughter Kim. She is invited to spend time in Paris with a friend; as she is a minor she needs the permission of mother and father to leave the country, reluctantly, pinned into a corner by his ex-wife Lenore, Bryan signs the papers to let Kim go to Paris. He gets Kim on the phone once she arrives to her apartment in Paris and men promptly break in and take Kim and her friend captive. Bryan records the call and has it analyzed by his friends still in the government quickly learning that Kim has been taken by a group that deals in human trading and he has 96 hours before Kim will disappear so far in the inner workings of the sex trade that she can never be found. Like any vengeful father with a set of amazing skills Bryan sets out to Paris to find his daughter and hurt the men responsible.

I feel like Taken is a movie I shouldn’t have enjoyed, but I really did love it. This is a vigilante movie ala Death Wish and Liam Neeson and Pierre Morel create a fantastic action film that really is one of the most enjoyable action films that I’ve seen in recent years.

Director: Pierre Morel
Writers: Luc Besson & Robert Mark Kamen
Amanda: Katie Cassidy
Kim: Maggie Grace
Lenore: Famke Janssen
Bryan: Liam Neeson
Sam: Leland Orser

Bryan: I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.
Marko: Good luck.