One of the major flaws with Knight and Day is the running time this lengthy action-comedy unrolls, which for some reason I found superficially annoying. Director James Mangold, most recognized for his two enjoyable pieces 3:10 to Yuma and Walk the Line (which had a lot more heart than 3:10 did), is used to experimenting with his audience’s patience, the previously mentioned works both respectively clocking in at two-plus hours. Knight and Day, Mangold’s seventh feature, goes on for an hour fifty before finally winding down and shutting itself off, leaving crowds with their own scattered opinions. This isn’t the only thing about the movie I didn’t like, though films with elderly running times tend to have characters and storylines you’re willing to invest in. While Knight and Day isn’t the most dreadfully unambiguous movie I’ve seen this year it’s certainly one of the more alienating.

During my showing there were people hooting (just to reiterate, I mean hooting) with laughter, some forced but most truthfully spawned. Has this season’s cinematic bar been set so low Tom Cruise flashing a pretty-boy smile at a damsel in distress is able to reach some sort of phenomenal high? Anyway, you’ve got the “damsel in distress” June Havens (Cameron Diaz) en route to her sister’s wedding, where hotshot Roy Miller (Tom Cruise, impeccable) unwillingly whisks her from death-defying event to death-defying event to half-baked scenario in the movie’s rare lulls. Everyone’s after a high-powered battery that Simon Feck (There Will Be Blood’s Paul Dano) has inspirited upon Miller’s request, as for why I still can’t clearly let you in on. There’s nary a time where adventurous, nonsensical whimsy isn’t sported or one-liners aren’t blurting out of Cruise, a dynamo here. Problem is his supposed “comeback” vehicle is in heavy need of an adjustment. Not a realistic one, mind you, but something to at least buy into. It’s like walking into a store, money burning in your pocket, itching to dish into whatever a clerk pushes in front of your face. We’re way past that. With the exception of the fantastic Toy Story 3 and absurd A-Team this summer has pretty much blown. We’re no longer willing to grab at any old thing.

I haven’t seen Killers (and I don’t plan to), but just from previews or plot synopsis you can guess it’s a lot like Knight and Day. Boy meets girl, boy rescues girl, girl and boy live happily ever after. Mangold, or better yet Patrick O’Neill’s script, can’t read between the lines. Nix whatever Mangold’s managed to cook up in recent years Knight and Day should have been able to develop and decently execute something that wasn’t too hard a get-go in the first place. The ones laughing in my audience were, believe it or not, women, young and old (ones reminiscent of Cruise’s Vanilla Sky and Mission: Impossible days). O’Neill subscribes to a tired chauvinistic belief, intentional or not. June Haven – who am I kidding, Cameron Diaz – doesn’t ask, never volunteers to enter Miller’s harebrained world (there I go again) yet she’s dragged in anyway, maybe for a beach scene or two. Knight and Day doesn’t fill in the cracks, Diaz falling up short at first with buying into Cruise’s elaborate tales and then, on a complete whim, is suddenly as much a part of the body-counting and baddie-shooting as everyone else is. If that ain’t another jerk-off of a bad sports movie.

On a positive note it’d be criminal not to point out the spectacle Cruise showboats here, tossing up Mission: Impossible with the ties of a rogue Jerry Maguire. Baton in hand he’s sly and slick; as if MacGyver were cast as the next James Bond. As the rest of the movie, great cast and all (Paul Dano, seriously?), begin to crash it’s Cruise’s movie from beginning to end. Does that save the mediocrity left to come? Not really, just makes up an excuse any generic action theater entry would pass off in some quote or promotional preview. You’ve seen one poorly done movie with beating A/C on you’ve seen ‘em all. Oh yeah, and the scenery’s nice.

SKIP IT.