Knight and Day

Director James Mangold’s sprightly spy flick Knight and Day is one of the more pleasant surprises of 2010, right up until a soul-crushing final scene that could have been written by a testy target audience. Tom Cruise is more dashing and likable than he’s been all decade, and the inanely written role of June Havens is right in Cameron Diaz’s wheelhouse (i.e., she isn’t asked to do much besides ditz about, scrunch up her nose and look good in a bikini). Cruise plays Roy Miller, a mysterious mole who uses an unwitting June to smuggle a MacGuffin past airport security; soon enough, he’s killed everyone on the plane and crash-landed into an Iowa cornfield. Roy insists he’s the good guy, but federal agents believe he’s a rogue counterspy selling secrets to the highest bidder—a predictable but dizzily entertaining romantic adventure ensues.