Another entry in the Action/Romance genre. I must say that this was more enjoyable than recently reviewed Killers although it is basically the same film. Perhaps because I would rather see Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz than Kutcher and Heigl, but it is still a "turn off brain before entering" film. Here we see a CIA agent (Cruise) come into contact with a regular person (Diaz). The encounter leads to two hours of hi-jinks as Cruise alternately uses, protects and then is saved by Diaz, all in the name of national security. We are supposed to question Cruise's sanity (although we never really do) and be awed by his action hero chops (but are unimpressed by the CGI bulls running through Spain). There is a bit of chemistry between Diaz and Cruise, but it is always interrupted by the next big crisis, leaving us with only the verbal jabbing that surely suggests they really like each other. What ends up happening is that the film gets remembered as an Action/Comedy because of the verbal jabs and cheesy attempts to insert a meaningful interaction when really, it just wants to get on to the next action sequence. There are no surprises with this conventional summer movie and you get exactly what you expect. Surely nothing more, but not really any less either.
Since watching this I started to think about films that I have seen that would be considered great in this Action/Romance category. I couldn't think of any. There are lots in the Action/Sex category (The Specialist with Stallone and Sharon Stone for example) because the sex doesn't slow down the action, whereas the romance must??? And there are lots of Thriller/Romance (Duplicity with Julia Roberts and Clive Owen), Hero/Romance (nearly any comic book based film), and even films like The Brick that have action and romance but are really focused on something totally different (like high school angst) so that it is never considered a romance film. Clearly it is not easy to put together an Action/Romance film but I would be curious if anyone has any suggestions for even good ones.
3 stars (out of 5)
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