Knight and Day is a 2010 action/comedy film directed by James Mangold and 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. Not to be confused with Night and Day.
Knight and Day provides examples of:
- 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.
- Affectionate Parody: Cruise plays Roy Miller as basically the loonier side of Jerry Maguire (think "help me help you!") crossed with the tireless 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.
- Ambiguous Disorder: Simon is highly intelligent and has poor social skills, obsessive interests and compulsive behaviour.
- 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.
- Artistic License – Geography: The movie ends with June apparently having driven Roy from the US to somewhere in South America, with them continuing on to Cape Horn. It is infamously impossible to drive from North America to South America, due to the Darién Gap
. - Artistic License – Physics:
- 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.
- Spanish bulls from the Sanfermines would not send a car rolling like crazy as the film shows. Despite the admittedly humongous power and momentum a charging bull can generate, a car is too heavy of an obstacle and has a too low center of gravity, even if hit by an entire encierro (that is, around five bulls released at the same time). The bulls could believably flip the car over and/or push it into sliding a long distance, but not make it roll multiple times with the momentum of a single tackle as portrayed in the film.
- 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.
- 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.
- Bottomless Magazines: June fires off an MP7 for a ridiculously long time when Roy surprises her during a firefight.
- Broken Record: "We'll keep you safe, June."
- Brutish Bulls: Because you cannot set an action film in Spain without a San Fermín encierro causing a chase.
- Captain Obvious: It pops up from time to time.Roy: You stay here, I'm going to go have a chat with those guys in the tunnel...actually, I'm going to go kill them. Wait right here.
- 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.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: 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!
- Dead Foot Leadfoot: Causing one of the Badass Driver incidents.
- Exact Words: When June tells Roy not to drug her again, a few minutes later, he pinches her neck. She notes that he is, and before she blacks out, he says "You told me not to drug you again."
- False Reassurance: Roy tells June (after surviving the first fight scene and the plane crashing) that government agents will come to question her and that she better be careful because if they keep saying that they "keep her safe" they are definitely meaning that they will assassinate her. You can guess what the agents that abduct her three scenes later keep telling her.
- 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 "CuO3 = boom!!". Guess what happens to the battery.
- When Roy and June are hiding out at his place in the Azores, Roy is coming back from a successful underwater spearfishing trip when June wakes up. This is an early indication that Roy is good at holding his breath, and is likely to have survived his encounter with the CIA in Austria, even before June goes to meet his folks.
- Genre Savvy. June, when being interrogated by Antonio, says something like "The Good Guy is probably round the corner."
- Heroic Sacrifice: Roy, taking a bullet for Simon. He survives, though.
- Hollywood Provincialism: Boston-based June says "the I-93."
- 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.
- 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 Mardi Gras in New Orleans: It's the festival of San Fermín when the setting goes to Spain, though they don't get the right town: they go to Seville, even though San Fermín's main location is in Pamplona.
- 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.Simon: Oh my God! Just die!
- MangstRoy: 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, when he isn't brutally fighting his assailants that is. This becomes a little clearer later on when he seems to have stopped using excessive force in tough situations. He also doesn't curse or swear at all throughout the entire movie. In one of the heartwarming 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.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: A Running Gag involving Roy's One-Man Army antics when June is drugged, because we're following her point of view.
- 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!"
- Pun-Based Title: (K)night and Day.
- Rail Enthusiast: Simon has a passion for trains and is ecstatic about getting to ride in the engine compartment.
- Rated M for Manly: Constant action, check; spy games, check; explosions, check; firefights, check; Cameron Diaz in a bikini...
- Running Gag: June getting drugged by various parties, but mainly Roy.
- 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!"
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: In a rare twist given how tongue-in-cheek the film and its tone are, most of June's reactions in the first half of the movie are completely realistic to how a normal person would react to the utterly violent, crazy shenanigans that happen around Roy. Especially her being terrified enough for panic fire and screaming her head off when Roy surprises her during one of the firefights.
- 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: The producers had the decency to shoot in the real Spain, but some undiscernible reason drove them to set a San Fermín festival in Seville (it takes place in Pamplona) and to shoot their version of Seville in Cádiz. It can be noted in the film itself, where a banda can be heard playing a feria song that goes "A Pamplona hemos de ir".note
- Trailers Always Lie: Many of the scenes in the official trailer
never actually made it into the movie and are available only as Deleted Scenes. - 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.
- Undressing the Unconscious: After being sedated by Roy, June wakes up in a bikini on a tropical island. She confronts him about it, pointing out that he must have undressed her to do this to her at one point. At the end of the movie, June does the same to Roy.
- Wrench Wench: June, who's a car refurbisher.
- 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.
