Knight and Day

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

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.

Tropes used in Knight and Day include:
  • Action Girl - June, by the end of the movie.
  • 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 - Roy Miller's private island in the Azores is attacked and blown up.
  • Always Save the Girl - subverted: June deliberately gets herself kidnapped so that she can get back together with Roy, assuming that he'll save her. He does, but he has no idea that she's there at the time, as he's around for a completely different reason. 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.

"Sorry, reflex. Hit me again; I won't dodge this time."

  • 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: "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."

  • 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. A few scenes later a would-be assassin puts her in - what else - a reverse choke hold.
  • Cloudcuckoolander - Every screw in Roy's lovable head is loose, as exemplified by this line:

Roy No one follows us, or I kill myself and then her!

Simon: Just die already!

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

  • 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 - and into the river.
  • No One Could Survive That - Roy, after falling into the river. Every one assumes him to be dead despite never finding a body.
  • 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: June, by the end of the film.
  • 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. The bad guy takes off in a plane with the highly sought after Zephyr battery, pausing only to take a shot at Simon.
  • 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, taking out the villain in his moment of triumph. 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.