Knight and Day



2010 Summer Blockbuster Action Adventure movie starring Tom Cruise as secret agent Roy Miller, who might be trying to clear his name or who might be trying to cover up a horrific multiple-murder and theft of a potent free energy MacGuffin, and Cameron Diaz as June Havens, a Wrench Wench Action Girl sidekick embroiled in spy games that go way over her head.

This film provides examples of the following.
""Sorry, reflex. Hit me again; I won't dodge this time.""
 * Action Girl -
 * Action Hero - played by Tom Cruise, of course.
 * Action Survivor - June, for most of the movie.
 * Adrenaline Makeover - played straight and subverted; June Havens certainly Took a Level In Badass after significant bits of the plot, but up until the halfway point of the movie she got progressively more worn down as the action progressed.
 * Adorkable - Roy and Simon.
 * Adult Child - Roy again.
 * Affectionate Parody: Cruise plays Roy Miller as basically the loonier side of Jerry Maguire (think "help me help you!") crossed with the tireless Crazy Awesome secret agent Ethan Hunt.
 * All Your Base Are Belong to Us -
 * Always Save the Girl - subverted:  He does take a moment in the middle of a firefight to step out from cover and kiss her when she guilt talks him into it, though.
 * Angrish - June's reactions in much of the first half of the movie.
 * Anti-Hero - Roy Miller may have killed dozens of innocents in cold blood and stolen the perpetual energy battery; he definitely kills dozens of agents in cold(ish) blood and drags an unknown innocent into the fight with him, though it's fairly obvious that he has little to no choice about the matter.
 * Armor-Piercing Slap - Subverted.

"Roy: "You stay here, I'm going to go talk to those guys in the tunnel... Actually, I'm going to go kill them. Wait right here.""
 * Badass Driver - both Roy and June. June manages to pull off some amazing moves going the wrong way on the highway while controlling a runaway car from the back seat reaching over the corpse of the former driver - Roy calls her a "natural."
 * Belligerent Sexual Tension: Lampshaded by June after she's had a truth serum injected into her body and admits to Roy that all their crazy adventures make her want to have sex with him. His reaction is priceless.
 * Big Damn Heroes - Roy, in Seville.
 * Broken Record - "We'll keep you safe, June."
 * Bodybag Trick - done backwards; a supposed corpse is wheeled out of the hospital.
 * Bond Villain Stupidity - Yep. Mind you, at that point, the bad guy thought he had already won, so the survival of the good guys was reasonably irrelevant.
 * Captain Obvious - It pops up from time to time.

"Roy No one follows us, or I kill myself and then her!"
 * Casual Danger Dialogue - Roy personifies this.
 * Chekhov's Gag - almost everything Roy says to June, funny or not.
 * Chekhov's Skill - At one point Roy demonstrates to June how to escape from a reverse choke hold.
 * Cloudcuckoolander - Every screw in Roy's lovable head is loose, as exemplified by this line:

"Simon: Just die already!"
 * Completely Missing the Point - Rodney, for a man going for lieutenant, you're more dense than a concrete training building.
 * Come With Me If You Want to Live
 * Contract On the Hitman
 * Deadfoot Leadfoot - causing one of the Badass Driver incidents.
 * Dueling Movies - Came out around the same time as Killers and while their plots are not identical, they are similar enough that the general public noticed the oddity of their close release dates. As to which of the two is the better film...YourMileageMayVary.
 * Escape Convenient Plane
 * Fight Magnet - given that the Zephyr is being hunted by everyone from a covert ops organization to Spanish gun runners, it's not too surprising.
 * Foreshadowing - Some of Simon's writing early in the movie reads . Guess what happens to.
 * Got Volunteered - June. Several times.
 * Government Agency of Fiction
 * Guns Akimbo
 * Heroic Sacrifice -
 * Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: done so much it stops being funny. The baddies are entirely worthless with guns, and can't track Tom's character while he calmly walks over to kiss the girl - let alone while he's running. They also have trouble hitting still targets.
 * Incredibly Obvious Tail
 * Ironic Echo: Roy's lines to June when they were alone on the island are altered and repeated to him by June at the end of the film.
 * It's Always San Fermin In Spain: Don't worry about getting the right town either.
 * A Load of Bull
 * Lodged Blade Recycling: June accidentally impales an assassin with a knife, followed by the assassin pulling it out of himself to attack June with.
 * Made of Iron - The assassin on the train. Wow. Most of the stuff is just standard movie things, until he gets stabbed in the chest with a knife! The assassin also No Sells June whacking him in the head with a frying pan.

"Roy: "That hurt more than I thought it would.""
 * Mangst


 * Meet Cute: Faked by Roy to get an item through customs via the unwitting June.
 * Mistaken for Badass - June, by the spy agency. Later on, though, she gets better.
 * Neutral Female - June, but not during the action sequences; she's actually this during much of the plot, being very decidedly on one side or the other when action breaks out.
 * Nice Guy - Roy, even when thrown into walls by super-strong Assassins, is a soft-spoken gentleman who does not curse or use swear words once throughout the entire movie. In one of the heart-warmeyer moments of the film, Roy has left June a note saying he was happy to have met her, and a second, reminding her to 'Eat a good breakfast, June'. He'd left her an omelette.
 * No Escape but Down -
 * No One Could Survive That -.
 * No One Should Survive That
 * Offscreen Moment of Awesome - Roy's antics when June is drugged, because we're following her point of view.
 * The Plan- Roy's many, many plans.
 * Precision F-Strike - June gets one in an argument with Roy about his "warning" not to get on a plane not being very effective, she then says that a better warning would've been saying something like "June, if you get on this plane, you will fucking die!"
 * Protectorate - Simon and the Zephyr (which is a Good Name for A Rock Band)
 * Rasputinian Death: Lampshaded.
 * Rated "M" for Manly - Constant action, check; spy games, check; explosions, check; firefights, check; Cameron Diaz in a bikini...
 * Slap Slap Kiss - Roy and June, naturally.
 * Shoot the Fuel Tank
 * Sic Em
 * Sole Survivor - Simon, Roy, or Fitz, depending on your point of view. The massacre happens in the backstory, and most of the movie is trying to figure out exactly who did what to whom.
 * Stop or I Shoot Myself: "No one follows us, or I kill myself and then her!"
 * Teen Genius - Simon, who's managed to solve the energy crisis despite the fact that he's "barely out of high school".
 * Theme Naming - June and her sister April.
 * Time Bomb - only there's no visible counter, and the object in question isn't actually supposed to be one.
 * Took a Level In Badass:
 * Toros Y Flamenco: They had the decency to shoot in the real Spain, but then put the running of the bulls in Seville...
 * Trailers Always Lie: Many of the scenes in the official trailer never actually made it into the movie.
 * Train Escape - streetcars, actually, but no less awesome.
 * Underestimating Badassery - although, given that Roy's being chased by his own organization, they should know better.
 * What Kept You?
 * You Are Too Late - literally.
 * You Fail Physics Forever: Subverted, but not at first. The Zephyr is presented as a true perpetual motion machine - it will never run out of energy, ever. However, over the course of the film, the battery slowly builds up heat and eventually explodes, . Despite Roy's reassurance to Simon that "[he's] a smart kid - [he'll] figure it out," he clearly won't: The audience knows this, but Roy doesn't, meaning he still fails physics.