By Kenneth Turan
Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES — Why is everyone giving Tom Cruise such a hard time? Can’t we just forget about what happened on Oprah’s couch? Is that asking too much? Is the movie business so flush with charismatic stars who can carry a picture that it can afford to eat its young? I don’t think so.
If you doubt Cruise’s skills in the star department, “Knight and Day” should make you a believer. It’s hardly a perfect film, not even close, but it is the most entertaining made-for-adults studio movie of the summer, and one of the reasons it works at all is the great skill and commitment Cruise brings to the starring role.
A genial romantic thriller that very much wants to be in the mold of such Alfred Hitchcock entertainments as “North by Northwest” and “To Catch a Thief,” or even Stanley Donen’s “Charade,” “Knight and Day” is inevitably light on plausibility but, with Cameron Diaz, Peter Sarsgaard, Viola Davis and Paul Dano joining Cruise, it is strong in the acting department.