Review: "Wildlife"

“Wildlife” features some truly wonderful actors plying their craft at the highest of levels. And I didn’t believe a one of them for a cold minute.

This drama set in 1960 stars Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal as a youngish couple whose marriage is fracturing. Ed Oxenbould plays their sensitive 14-year-old son, Joe, who is forced to sit a front row seat to the slow, raucous dissolution. The film is based on the novel by Richard Ford, unread by me.

In stories of this kind we’re used to a lot of repressed emotions and raised voices behind closed doors. In the Hollywood view of this period, America was a cloistered place where people didn’t like to publicly air their dirty laundry. Things like marital estrangement and infidelity were swept under rugs.

Here, the film takes things so far to the opposite end it strains credulity to the breaking point, and beyond.

Not only do Jeanette and Jerry Brinson (Mulligan and Gyllenhaal, respectively) make no effort to hide their growing war from Joe, they actually enlist him as a participant. He sits in on their arguments and is explicitly asked to offer an opinion or take sides.

Later, the grotesquerie will grow even more overt, and less believable.

The Brinsons move around a lot because Jerry is always chasing the next big thing. He was recruited to be a golf pro at the club in Great Falls, Montana, but soon loses the job because he’s too “familiar” with the guests. (Read: he gambles with them.) They quickly offer to take him back, but Jerry’s pride is hurt and he refuses. Soon he’s doing little more than lounging on the couch, listening to ball games on the radio and sipping an endless parade of beers.

Jeanette is outwardly supportive of her husband’s lackadaisical job search. She even takes work herself as a swim instructor, and Joe gives up football to work in a photo studio afternoons after school to help make ends meet. 

That changes when Jerry agrees to take a job fighting the fires that seem to rage every year in the vast Montana forests. It will take him away from the family for weeks on end, which Jeanette views as a betrayal of sorts. She imagines him dallying with women, and uses that as justification for stepping out on her own.

The target of her amorous energy is an unlikely one: Warren Miller, a much older man played by Bill Camp. Balding, portly, bespectacled and walking with a pronounced limp, Warren isn’t much to look at. But he owns a car dealership, so Jeanette views him as a trade up from Jerry.

This is the directorial debut of Paul Dano, a very offbeat and good character actor, who also co-wrote the screenplay adaptation with actress Zoe Kazan (“The Big Sick”).

The biggest problem with “Wildlife” is never giving Joe any kind of distinct identity. His role is to just be there and witness the turmoil. Many stories use a character of this sort to be the audience’s lens to look at the real subjects, in this case Jerry and Jeanette.

But Joe isn’t even much of a real character. He doesn’t seem to have any interests, or motivations, or thoughts, or personality. There’s a girl who takes an obvious interest in him, but Joe sort of shrugs her off and the movie forgets about her.

There’s one scene in “Wildlife” that’s make-or-break. Jeanette puts on her “desperation dress” and takes Joe with her to have dinner at Warren’s house while Jerry is away. It’s an exquisitely awkward event. Mulligan skillfully shows us Jeanette’s obvious intention: to throw herself at Warren. For his part, Warren doesn’t appear disturbed about initiating the affair in her son’s presence, even offering fatherly advice.

I can’t for the life of me fathom people who would act like this. The problem isn’t that the film presents characters who are beyond comprehension; it’s that it doesn’t even attempt to explain these people to themselves.

Video review: "Love & Mercy"

“Love & Mercy” is an unconventional biopic about an unconventional musician. Brian Wilson was a self-taught prodigy who composed Billboard Top 10 hits for the Beach Boys of increasing musical complexity, even as his personal life sank into a morass of drugs, harmful relationships and mental illness.

Director Bill Pohlad, a veteran producer stepping behind the camera, and screenwriters Michael A. Lerner and Oren Moverman, set the story in two distinct points in Wilson’s life, the mid-1960s and mid-80s, and cast a pair of different actors to play him. The performances don’t match, deliberately so, since they’re showing Wilson as he descended into his two-decade period of purgatory, and then trying to climb out of it.

Paul Dano portrays Wilson as a young man looking to break out of the mold of flighty songs about girls, surfing and cars – much to the consternation of his brothers, bandmates and controlling father, who just want the hits to keep on coming.

John Cusack plays him in early middle age, struggling to break free of his torpor and reenter the world, with the help of a tough-but-tender Cadillac saleswoman (Elizabeth Banks) who acts as his touchstone.

Serving as the anchor is Dr. Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti), the Machiavellian psychiatrist who kept Wilson under virtual lock and key for years, deciding where he would go and with whom he would associate. As good as Giamatti was as the conniving manager in “Straight Outta Compton,” you should be aware it was his second – and second-best – portrayal of an infamous musical Svengali this year.

The movie really sings during the studio sessions where Wilson created the album “Pet Sounds” essentially in secret, using professional musicians instead of his siblings’ barely competent guitars and drums. Wilson is trying to replicate the sounds and voices he hears in his head, and funnel the burgeoning madness into what would become one of the greatest pop records of all time.

“Love & Mercy” is a stunning portrait of a man who made beautiful music while suffering a tragic existence. This discord is finely in tune.

Bonus features are agreeable, and are the same for Blu-ray and DVD editions. There are two making-of featurettes, “A California Story: Creating the Look of ‘Love & Mercy’” and “A-Side/B-Side: Portraying the Life of Brian Wilson.” There are also deleted scenes and a feature-length commentary track by Pohlad and Moverman.

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Video review: "Prisoners"

I often harp on the fact that I think most movies today are too long. And “Prisoners” is not a short flick: just a hair over 2½ hours. But it’s one of the rare films I think is exactly as long as it needed to be. It’s also one of my favorite cinematic experiences of 2013.

This psychological drama/thriller is wound tighter than an alarm clock ready to go off. Hugh Jackman and Terrence Howard play fathers and best friends whose daughters mysteriously disappear on Thanksgiving Day. Dover (Jackman) goes on a one-man crusade to follow any leads, frequently stepping on the toes of Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal), the meticulous detective assigned to the case.

Suspicion quickly centers on Alex (Paul Dano), a mentally challenged man who drives an RV and barely talks. But the police have no evidence to link him to the kidnapping, so they let him go. When Dover takes matters into his own hands, it sets off a chain reaction of events with all sorts of tricky moral implications.

The characterizations are really deep and vivid, with even the supporting parts standing out. When you have performers the caliber of Viola Davis, Maria Bello and Melissa Leo in the cast, you know things are going to get interesting.

Director Denis Villeneuve (“Incendies”) and screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski give us one of the most ambitious films of the year, one that raises all sorts of head-scratching conundrums while resisting the urge to provide any easy answers. This is the sort of movie were parsing out the good guys from the bad is a difficult and ultimately pointless exercise.

Splendidly acted and well-told, “Prisoners” is one of the year’s best.

Video extras, which are the same for the DVD and Blu-ray editions, are sorely lacking. They both contain a pair of featurettes focusing on the story and performances, and that’s it.

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Review: "12 Years a Slave"

It caused quite a sensation when it came out, but since 1853 the book “12 Years a Slave” by Solomon Northup has largely faded from memory. The movie adaptation by director Steve McQueen and screenwriter John Ridley brings the sin of slavery back into our faces with searing honesty about the brutality and dehumanization of an entire people.

Chiwetel Ejiofor, in an Oscar-worthy turn, plays Northup – an educated and talented musician and engineer from Saratoga, New York, kidnapped and sold into bondage in Louisiana, where he toiled and struggled to survive. Forced to take on the persona of “Platt,” he hid his abilities, including reading and writing, to pass himself off as a field laborer.

Over the next dozen years he experiences untold degradation and torture, having his back flayed until it is little more than a crisscross patchwork of scars. Separated from his wife and children, he can only imagine their own pain and torment. And he must submit to the rule of white Southerners who view him as a piece of chattel to be used and discarded as needs or whims serve.

Ejiofor brings an earnest grace to the role, an ordinary, intelligent man placed in hellish circumstances that defy logic. He holds onto his pride with great care, even violently defying an especially cruel overseer (Paul Dano) who can’t stand that a slave knows more about building houses than he does.
Even though he eventually learns not to make waves, he never loses track of his inner soul. Because of that, hope never truly dies.

If the film has a weakness, it’s that McQueen and Ridley overplay their hand. Northup’s life prior to his ordeal is an idealized existence in which whites and blacks live in perfect harmony -- eating at each other’s tables, shopkeepers enthusiastically offering their handshake and assistance.

Ironically, it’s only in traveling to our nation’s capital (where slavery was still allowed in 1841) that he exposes himself to nefarious types who make a business of carrying off free blacks to the deep South, where they can fetch prices of $1,000. A decent, law-abiding man, Northup at first reacts with disbelief and threats to sue his oppressors. Defiance is soon (literally) beaten out of him, and a host of merchants warn him upon threat of death never to mention his real name or origin again.

At first Northup is placed in the hands of a genteel owner named Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch), who treats him with respect and makes use of the engineering skills of “Platt.” He even gives him a violin out of patriarchal devotion -- both to soothe the slaves and please his own ear.

But circumstances change, and Platt is sold to a vile man with a reputation for being stern with his slaves.
The film reaches its greatest emotional heights -- and depths -- under the reign of Epps, a plantation master played by Michael Fassbender. Conflating his religious beliefs with his inhuman instincts, Epps is a caricature of a character, frightening to behold but difficult to accept as truthful.

Fassbender is leering and electric, not content to just subjugate his slaves but fawn while doing so. A favorite move is putting his face right into theirs, practically nuzzling Platt or his favorite, Patsey, before putting them to the whip, or indulging his sexual cravings, or both.

Lupita Nyong’o is a terrific presence as Patsey, a slender reed of a woman who can pick three times as much cotton in a day as most men. But she must navigate the tumultuous river of jealousy springing forth from Mrs. Epps (Sarah Paulson), who fears that her husband values a slave more than his wife.

“12 Years a Slave” is a mesmerizing cinematic experience, easily one of the best of the year. I couldn’t help feeling, though, that the filmmakers would’ve better served the audience by exercising a little more restraint. By making the villain better resemble an actual human, the crucible of slavery would have had the weight of authenticity, and been made even more harrowing.

Review: "Prisoners"

The most persistent criticism I have of movies today is length. Even most films I admire could be shortened a bit, and be the better for it. "Prisoners" is the rare exception of a long movie that earns its time; I didn't begrudge it any one of its 153 minutes.

This intricately-plotted psychological thriller is like a puzzle box that seems mystifying at first, but the deeper you go the clearer things come into focus. In the end all the little pieces mesh together perfectly.

The story of two kidnapped little girls and the two men trying desperately to find them -- one an angry, grieving father, the other an obsessive police detective -- "Prisoners" defies easy categorization. On the surface it wears the clothes of a crime procedural. But also it's about the conflict between these two characters.

Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman), the dad, is all gut instincts and faith. His emotions frequently get the better of him as time goes on and the chances of finding the girls alive plummet. Loki, the detective played by Jake Gyllenhaal, operates on logic and dogged determination. Early on we learn that he has never failed to solve a case, mainly because his life consists of little else but the hunt.

On an even deeper level, the film is a morality play, questioning whether extreme actions in the service of good can ever justify themselves. Keller becomes convinced that a simple-minded, nearly mute man named Alex (Paul Dano) has something to do with the disappearance of his daughter and another family's girl on Thanksgiving Day.

Alex's busted-up RV was spotted near where the girls went missing, and he initially ran from police. But they find no evidence to hold him, and Keller takes matters into his own hands. He enlists the aid of the other aggrieved father (Terrence Howard) in holding Alex hostage, which sets off a conflict between the two. There's a subtle rivalry between them: the well-off yuppie versus the blue-collar survivalist, the voice of civil reason against the "man's gotta do what a man's gotta do" individualist credo.

"He's not a person anymore," Keller insists. "He stopped being a person when he took our daughters."

Their wives react in equally different ways. Keller's spouse Grace (Maria Bello) essentially checks herself out, wallowing in pity and prescription sedatives. Nancy (Viola Davis) is front and center in the search, and then gets even more involved in a way that surprises.

Director Denis Villeneuve ("Incendies") and screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski explore their characters in subtle, probing ways. For instance, Loki's tattoos on his fingers and neck hint at a hard past, and a throwaway line of dialogue suggests he's an orphan. He's an idealist grown suspicious of traditional bastions of solidity, like the church or even the scales of justice for which he labors.

Keller's collection of religious crosses, weapons and emergency rations depict a man of outward confidence who inwardly lives in fear, leading us to believe at one point he may have had something to do with the kidnapping himself.

Other characters and story threads float around the fringes. There's the priest Loki investigates with a terrible secret that may or may not have something to do with this case. And Alex's protective aunt (Melissa Leo), who wants to protect her nephew but seems to intuitively understand Keller's rage at his impotence. Or the strange, sallow-faced man who shows up at a candlelight vigil.

Slowly, methodically, the cast and crew build this crime story into something much more, a dark and disturbing tale about the choices we make in duress. We're all prisoners of those decisions, for good or ill.

Video review: "Looper"

Ambitious but not entirely successful, “Looper” is much more than your standard science fiction action flick.
Writer/director Rian Johnson (“Brick”) has crafted a film that’s less concerned with the mechanics of time travel than with the ramifications it has on its characters. It also has one of the boldest casting movies of the year, with Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing the same man separated by 30 years in age.

Joe is an assassin, or “looper,” living in Kansas City circa 2044. The loopers kill victims sent back in time by a crime syndicate that runs everything in the future. Their careers are prosperous but brief – retirement comes when the victim who shows up to be assassinated is themselves, three decades into the future.

Unfortunately for Young Joe, Old Joe has apparently been preparing carefully for this day and manages to escape. This sets off a nasty temporal snafu, as well as pitting the two of them against each other and the entire looper operation.

Eventually, the story leads to a lonely farm where a protective young mother (Emily Blunt) guards her son Cid (Pierce Gagnon) from the world at large – for good reason, as it turns out.

“Looper” is bursting with originality, but the movie seems to spin sidewise from itself and lose focus. Eventually it all gets tied up in a satisfying way, even if the journey getting there isn’t always a smooth one.

The film is getting a terrific video release piled high with cool features, and you don’t have to pay top dollar for the Blu-ray edition to get lots of goodies.

The DVD comes with a feature-length commentary track by Johnson, and also includes Gordon-Levitt and Blunt. The best commentaries usually include both filmmakers and cast. The DVD also boasts an animated trailer, five deleted scenes with commentary, and two making-of featurettes about creating the story and the musical score.

Go for the Blu-ray, and you receive 17 more deleted scenes with commentary and another featurette, “The Science of Time Travel.”

Movie: 3 stars out of four
Extras: 3.5 stars

Review: "Looper"

"Looper" starts out with an audacious and novel premise, develops it in a logical and satisfying manner, and then sort of spins sideways with it.

For awhile I worried I was witnessing a non-comedy version of "Funny People," another film that started out bold and promising, and then we watched it slowly and painfully slide off a cliff with an extended visit to the main character's ex-girlfriend's house.

Something quite similar happens here, as about an hour into the story Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) finds himself on a lonely farm where he encounters a sullen young boy named Cid (Pierce Gagnon) and his hard-bitten, protective mother, Sara (Emily Blunt). Joe is a looper, an assassin who kills victims who have been sent back in time by mysterious criminal syndicates 30 years into the future.

His misadventures have brought him to this farmhouse, and at first I thought this encounter was merely a diversion in a harrowing journey in which Joe tries to solve a vexing time-travel puzzle. But it turns out this farm is not the story's way station but its destination, and everything else that transpires is centered on Cid and Sara.

I felt like the movie had lost me, as the dynamic involving these three characters comes to dominate the tale, which had been focused on the dynamic between Joe and another important character (more on that in a minute).

But eventually writer/director Rian Johnson brings things all together. The ending is not entirely unexpected, but as we sit and ponder it we realize no other finale would have made sense.

"Looper" is a challenging film, grandly ambitious and demanding of its audience. This means Johnson treats them with intelligence, but also that he knows he will leave some percentage of them scratching their heads when it's over.

Johnson relies on inference and suggestion rather than just showing you the tease and then the payoff. For example, at one point when Cid is throwing a temper tantrum, Sara runs out of the room and into her closet, where she has a massive thick steel safe embedded. She climbs into it and closes the door, and we get the distinct impression this ritual has been performed many times before. What possible reason could she have for this strange behavior? Eventually we learn, but it's not a quick or obvious deduction.

As assassins go, loopers are not the highly-trained and sophisticated killers we usually see in movies. In fact, they ply their trade in a rather sad and boring way. They are told when to show up in a deserted place, with a crude shotgun called a blunderbuss trained on a certain spot covered by a tarp. The victim appears there, already bound and gagged and helpless, and the looper blows them away. Their payment, in neatly-ordered bars of silver, is even conveniently strapped to the soon-to-be-dead guy's back. Basically, they just pull a trigger and dump the body.

Like many of his fellow loopers, Joe is living the high life in a dystopian future that they know for certain is bookended, at least for them. He wears fancy clothes and does designer drugs ("drops" that you put in your eyes) and drives a flashy red sports car -- all things that most people can't do in 2044 Kansas City. Most of the population are vagrants who live on the streets.

Without it ever explicitly being stated, it seems clear something horrendous has happened between now and 2044 -- even more so than between that time and the future from where looper victims are sent.

Technology seems to have gotten churned up, with communications no further advanced than today. Cars are still around, seemingly the very same ones from 2012 that have been retrofitted with solar panels and alternative fuel lines. The criminals carry one of two types of weapons, powerful blunderbusses like Joe or enormous revolvers called "gats." They favor long coats and mid-20th century ties and apparel, and it seems like the mid-21st century is a crude amalgam of the cultural leftovers of the two previous centuries.

Loopers know their career, and their lives, are finite because one day the victim that shows up will be themselves, 30 years older. They get a big payoff -- gold bars instead of silver -- and forced retirement, knowing they have three decades to live and plenty of money to live high while doing it. This is called "closing your loop."

Unfortunately for Joe, his loop (played by Bruce Willis) has obviously spent his time preparing for this day. Old Joe easily overpowers young Joe, which puts them both on the run. Young Joe is desperate to kill his "loop" and get back in the good graces of Abe (Jeff Daniels), the boss man who was sent back from the future to oversee the loopers. Old Joe keeps making overtures to young Joe to try to convince him there are bigger forces at work here, a mission that will eventually lead them all back to that farm.

Gordon-Levitt wears special prosthetics and contact lenses in an attempt to make him more physically resemble Willis. The effect is arresting but not entirely successful. He doesn't so much look like a young Bruce Willis as a young third person unrelated to either of them. For example, they give Gordon-Levitt thick, arching eyebrows that Willis has never possessed.

The relationship between the two Joes should be the fulcrum of the story, and for a time it is. Johnson shows us flash-forward sequences of what happens to Joe in the intervening 30 years, and why Old Joe is doing what he does. He has very good reasons and is torn up inside about what he feels he has to do, but that doesn't keep it from being terrible, dirty deeds.

Other story elements flitter around the edges. There's a new syndicate boss in the future referred to only as The Rainmaker who becomes important without ever being seen. There are also genetic mutations that about 10 percent of the population has allowing them to do very minor telekinesis.

One brilliant story element is that the future is not set, so once the two loopers exist in the same time zone, freaky-deaky things can transpire. For example, anything that happens to the young looper becomes a part of the older looper's persona -- instantly altering their memory and even their body. In a horrifying early sequence, a friend of Joe's (Paul Dano) lets his loop get away. Then we witness some truly terrifying things happen to the older man, which is how we know what is happening to his younger version.

Joe, a sharp cookie, uses this knowledge to his advantage when his own loop is on the run, finding a way to communicate with him that is both inspired and depraved.

I don't mind saying that "Looper" has been one of the films I've most been looking forward to this year. I experienced a small tinge of disappointment because I didn't come out of it with an immediate rush of satisfaction, and the movie didn't have as much emotional punch as I would've hoped. Joe's story is a compelling one, but it feels like we're observing it rather than being engaged in it.

But I think this is the sort of film that bears repeated viewings to fully understand and embrace its complexities. I'm reminded of Steven Spielberg's "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence," a movie that demands our respect more than our adoration. I give "Looper" for its boldness -- this is way, way more than a standard sci-fi/action flick.

3 stars out of four

Review: "Cowboys & Aliens"

Perhaps I was expecting too much out of "Cowboys & Aliens" ... or at least, I was expecting something much different.

For a summer tent pole movie with a title like that, starring two actors  -- Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford -- who have played iconic action heroes, and directed by admitted fanboy Jon Favreau ("Iron Man"), I was expecting something loopier. Wacky hi jinks coupled with slick special effects.

What we get instead is a fast-paced Western oater in which the bad guys happen to be crusty boogums from outer space. Imagine "War of the Worlds," except the invasion happens during the days of six-shooters and saddles.

The result is a movie that takes itself way more seriously than any film with a title like "Cowboys & Aliens" ought to.

It's still a fun ride, and Ford gets to play a more multi-dimensional character than we've seen in awhile. Craig is less fascinating, squinting his way through the movie and stumbling through an unconvincing American accent.

The movie opens without preamble. A man wakes up in the desert, lacking boots, a weapon or even a memory of who he is. He's the epitome of the spaghetti Western Man with No Name, since he doesn't even know it himself.

He does have a strange metal doohickey attached to his left wrist, and when some cowpokes try to roust him, he discovers a freakish ability at hand-to-hand combat.

The stranger rides into town, where he is soon identified as Jake Lonergan, a notorious bandit with a $1,000 bounty on his head. He runs into trouble with the son of the local ranch boss, and finds himself arrested by the sheriff. There's also a strange, beautiful woman who knows how to use a pistol and seems very interested in Lonergan.

Things come to a head when Col. Dolarhyde (Ford), the ranch boss, arrives to spring his boy. He's a hardened Civil War veteran, takes guff from no man, and always gets what he wants.

It seems things will go very badly when suddenly the town is attacked by spaceships, which blow people to bits or lasso them with metal contraptions and carry them away. Lonergan's bracelet suddenly comes to life and shoots down one of ships, so he's recruited for the posse to track down the kidnapped townsfolk.

Things go on from there, and there wasn't much that was very surprising, although it was executed well. The secret of Lonergan's amnesia and laser bracelet are uncovered, the creatures reveal themselves in all their googly-eyed, crustaceous glory, and of course some American Indians will ride in as some sort of reverse cavalry.

Dolarhyde is the most interesting character by far, and the small army of screenwriters (six, including story credits) give him plenty of layers. At first he's just a hateful old boss, pushing people around with his wealth and gang of armed cowboys. But eventually we discover him to be more haunted than hateful, especially in his relationships with a longtime Indian employee (Adam Beach) and a young boy who tags along with the posse.

I enjoyed myself at "Cowboys & Aliens," but it's not the sort of experience that will linger in the memory. Instead of genre-bending kitsch, we got a gritty Western with creepy critters.

2.5 stars out of four

Video review: "Knight and Day"

Audiences were unkind to "Knight and Day." Maybe it's because they've collectively decided they're so over Tom Cruise. If so, I wouldn't blame them.

If someone were to construct a how-to guide for the world's biggest movie star to systematically alienate most of Hollywood and ticket-buyers, Cruise's actions over the last few years would look shockingly familiar.

But that doesn't diminish the fact that this is his most purely entertaining movie since "Jerry Maguire." He's a suave, dangerous and mesmerizing onscreen presence. As I wrote in my review at the time, "Tom Cruise reminds us why we used to like Tom Cruise so much."

He plays Roy Miller, a rogue super-spy on the run. He hooks up with June Evans (Cameron Diaz), a mechanic from Boston, to help get through airport security. Later, he flirts with her on the plane, and while she excuses herself to the lavatory, he assassinates everyone aboard.

Soon they're hopping all over the globe, with Roy's loyalties constantly in question. The never-mind plot has something to do with a new type of battery that can power an entire city, forever.

It's a classic movie MacGuffin -- it doesn't matter what it is, other than everybody wants it.

It's a fun thrill ride of a movie, with a tight, clever script by rookie screenwriter Patrick O'Neill. Director James Mangold ("Walk the Line") keeps the tone light, and stages the action scenes impressively without going over the top.

Give Cruise, and "Knight and Day," a second chance on video.

The movie is available as a single-disc DVD version or a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack.

The DVD comes with modest extras: A making-of documentary, a couple of featurettes and a Black Eyed Peas music video.

The combo pack ups the ante with several more behind-the-scenes features, and a digital copy of the film.

Movie: 3 stars out of four
Extras: 2.5 stars

Review: "Knight and Day"

What a fun, fun ride "Knight and Day" is. Yes, it's totally a summer popcorn movie, empty cinematic calories forgotten almost as soon as they're consumed. But Tom Cruise reminds us why we used to like Tom Cruise so much -- before the couch-jumping and the creepy interviews and all the other stuff that gave his star a sour taint.

This new action-comedy features Cruise doing the stuff he was born to do on the big screen: Seeming larger than life, dangerous but charming, flashing that Klieg light smile and making a girl's eyes positively twinkle at his attentions.

The girl in question is Cameron Diaz, whose own career has seemed on autopilot lately. She plays June Havens, a sweet gal from Boston who restores old cars for a living. June is traveling through the Kansas City airport with a suitcase full of carburetors and other parts, which makes her a perfect target for Roy Miller, the mystery man of the hour.

(By the way, I'd like to believe that a woman who looks like Diaz could be a mechanic, but I just didn't buy it. First of all, her hands are too smooth and clean to have had them inside the guts of a Pontiac on a daily basis. Ever looked at a mechanic's hands? They look like gorilla mitts. And who flies across the country to pick up car parts when UPS will ship them for a fraction of the cost?)

It turns out Roy and June are on the same flight back to Beantown. When it appears she'll be bumped from the flight, he comments that maybe some things are for the best. Then she gets on at the last minute, and he seems kind of disappointed. They talk, flirt some, and when she decamps to the lavatory to freshen up, Roy kills everybody on the plane, including the pilots.

Turns out Roy's a super-agent gone rogue -- or at least that's what the authorities tell June when she wakes up the next day back at home. Roy landed the plane safely (well, they both survived) and then promptly drugged her.

The rest of the movie is a nearly non-stop game of chase-chase, kiss-kiss. It seems Roy is in possession of a new kind of battery that can run an entire city, forever -- "the first source of perpetual energy since the sun." Various parties, including a Spanish arms dealer and the U.S. government, want it for themselves.

The battery is a classic MacGuffin -- an object that is critical to the plot despite remaining a total mystery. How the battery was built or how it works are unimportant (it sort of resembles an old camera film roll, before everything went digital) except to say that everyone wants to get their hands on it.

Rookie screenwriter Patrick O'Neill obviously understands about MacGuffins, and treats it as such. His clever script plays with the conventions of the action/thriller genre, throwing winking nods to the audience -- especially in the playful banter between Cruise and Diaz, who manage to invest their characters with a little soul in between the many car chases and gun battles.

Director James Mangold, not exactly known for lighter fare ("Walk the Line," "3:10 to Yuma"), does a nice job of keeping things in happy-time mode. His action scenes are crisp and stupendous without seeming totally implausible.

I admired how Mangold and O'Neill treat theirs stars like stars, but still invest the minor characters with distinctive presences. Paul Dano has a deer-like innocent quality as the brilliant young inventor of the battery, and Peter Sarsgaard sneers admirably as the heavy. Marc Blucas has a tiny but hilarious turn as June's doofy-but-decent ex.

But mostly, "Knight and Day" will be seen as Tom Cruise's comeback role -- though I doubt he'd acknowledge he went anywhere. He'll turn 48 a couple of weeks after this movie comes out, but if he wasn't Tom Cruise, just a guy on the street, I think most people would peg him at about 32.

Based on this flick, his career is certainly looking fresh again.

3 stars out of four