Alphabetical Movie – Knight & Day

I know a few people who really hate Tom Cruise.

Not Tom Cruise as an actor in a movie, mind you.  They just fucking hate Tom Cruise.

They hate him so much that they don’t ever want to watch a movie starring him, featuring him or possibly even associated with him.  I think that they would avoid movies with the word “cruise” in them. That’s cool, I guess.  Everyone has their own opinions.

I have to admit, knowing Cruise is into Scientology makes me think he’s a little bit nuts but I don’t honestly know the guy at all.  I don’t know him or Morgan Freeman or Susan Sarandon or any other actor that I see in a film.  I just know what some headline tells me about them.  Or what I can glean from an interview on Oprah.

But all of them are actors. Their job is to make you believe they are someone they are not.  When they go on an interview show, they are on stage.

That means none of us can fairly guess who these people are.  We shouldn’t give a damn who they are off screen because when we go watch them in a movie, we are watching the character they are creating.  Who they really are doesn’t matter to us, does it?

Do I honestly believe that Daniel Craig is trained in international espionage?  No.

But Daniel Craig can make me believe that James Bond is.  That’s his job.

Tom Cruise’s job is not to be the most likeable guy you’ll ever meet.  His job is to convince you that the character he plays in Knight & Day is a likable guy who also happens to be a super-spy.  I’m not really going to spend too much time on Knight & Day. It’s kind of a dorky movie.

Still, Cruise does a passable job of convincing me that he’s a super-spy who is in love with Cameron Diaz’s character.  He can’t convince me why but that is a nearly impossible task.  I can’t fault him for that.

But I’m not going to skip a movie with Cruise because I think he’s a dick.  Politically, I don’t agree with Gary Sinese but you know what?  I like him as an actor.  The movies I tend to avoid are films with people I don’t think can act.

Short of finding out that he molests children and kills puppies, I’m going to go see a film with Joseph Gordon Levitt because the guy is a fantastic actor.

Tom Cruise isn’t a great actor.  He is a very good one, though, and that means he is not a name that instantly makes me worried for a film.  It’s OK to take a movie off you list because Cruise is in it, I guess, but I’m personally pretty damned happy I’ve seen Magnolia.

No, I’m not going to sit out a movie with Tom Cruise in it.  Instead, I’m going to look at it and decide if it is the sort of movie I’d enjoy and if it sounds like it is halfway decent.

I mean, much as I enjoy Gary Sinese, you can’t force me to watch Mission to Mars again.

I’m probably not going to watch Knight & Day again either.  But that isn’t Tom Cruise’s fault.