Tom Cruise has a pretty illustrious filmography, featuring everything from blockbuster hits like Top Gun: Maverick to cult classics like Risky Business. However, now a Redditor has been making an argument that an underrated feature is potentially one of Cruise’s best – and we’ve got to admit, it’s pretty compelling reasoning.
The movie in question: the 2010 action rom-com Knight and Day. Yes, really. Starring Cruise opposite Cameron Diaz, the satire directed by James Mangold may have received mixed reviews, but it’s beloved by many. It follows Diaz as a classic car restorer who gets caught up with Cruise’s secret agent when he’s on the run from the CIA.
In a new post defending the movie, Reddit user Mavajo argues that a perfect satire of Cruise’s career, it was just badly mismarketed. “Basically, it’s two hours of Tom Cruise making fun of his career,” they begin, “and shit… he managed to still make a funny and entertaining movie, with a little charm and quirk even?”
In particular, they praised the absurdity of the film, arguing (although we’re not as sold on this bit) that “the movie actually ends up having more interesting personality than any of his last five Mission Impossible movies.”
For the Redditor, the crux of the issue – and why it didn’t hit with all reviewers early on – is down to bad marketing. “They shoulda played the ‘Tom Cruise mocks Tom Cruise’ angle for the movie. It came out less than two years after his cameo appearance in Tropic Thunder and could have benefitted from that momentum (he only did Valkyrie between Tropic Thunder and Knight & Day),” Navajo continued. “It’s Tom Cruise – but it’s new, it’s different.”
As we said before, it’s a good point. A lot of the marketing for the film was around the romance between the two leads, but actually where it really excels is being a funny and fresh take on the action genre. Perhaps if it leaned more into this, the Rotten Tomatoes score may have been slightly higher.
It certainly seems that the OP is not alone, either as plenty of others shared their thoughts too. “This movie was so much fun,” one replied. “Tom Cruise doesn’t do a lot of movies where he’s just having fun. I mean, he still makes movies that are fun (the Mission Impossible movies, for example), but the character he plays is usually very serious.”
“I showed this to a mixed audience of pre and early-teen children (boys and girls) and their parents and everyone enjoyed it – that is really impressive,” shared another. “I really like that it is told from Diaz’s perspective and the soundtrack, direction, and cinematography are top-notch. Truly underestimated.”
Although, some weren’t quite as convinced of the argument. “Let’s hold back on the hyperbole there. Knight and Day is passable, but the Mission Impossible movies have been fantastic,” argued another user. Still, maybe it’s time for a rethink of Cruise’s filmography.