This was never an equation that was going to end well. Take Tom Cruise, oozing charm and class as always. Add Cameron Diaz, feckless and airheaded as you’d expect. And multiply by a nonsensical script that doesn’t even want to be clever. The result? An action-comedy – with both words used in a particularly loose sense – that’s inoffensive and passable, but only if you pretty much shut your brain down first.
Here’s the set-up: Roy Miller (Cruise) is your typical action-hero super-spy, on the run from both the FBI and the CIA, elements of which have turned corrupt and are on the hunt for a recently developed perpetual energy device. Something that sounds like it’d be worth some money to someone.
To protect the designer of the fancy battery, Cruise has gone rogue. During his on-the-lam travels, he happens across car restoration expert June Havens (Diaz). Despite being as irritating as a papercut on a mosquito bite, Roy is instead taken by her – presumably because she’s a hot, leggy blonde – and the two quickly develop an intimate acquaintance.
From this point, it seems as though the prime concern behind making the movie was to transport the cast and crew to as many exotic locations as possible, with actually producing a decent film pretty low down on the agenda. From hot, tropical island paradises to cosy Austrian retreats, the settings are gorgeous as the two leading players.
But the pace is too frenetic, the motivations of the characters – both good and bad – are frustratingly opaque, and you’re given precious little reason to care about anybody at all.
The script should also be ashamed of itself, flying back and forth as it is done between idiotic one-liners and cheesy romanticism – most of which comes out of the mouth of Ms Diaz. Cruise manages to ride the cringe-wave slightly better, but when one of the most watchable actors around looks uncomfortable, you’re in trouble.
The action sequences are just as flimsy – Diaz somehow goes from cack-handed klutz to eagle-eyed gunslinger in double-quick time – and only the odd amusing one-liner helps pull things out of the gutter. Stuck in a ditch between two genres, this is neither funny nor exhilarating enough to pass muster, and you end up wondering why they bothered at all.