Flying home for her sister's wedding, Cameron Diaz gets mixed up with crackpot CIA agent Tom Cruise, and together they try to keep a secret weapon from falling into the wrong hands. Cruise and Diaz have worked together before (in
Vanilla Sky), but this is their first summer-movie pairing, and their star qualities are so similar—dazzling looks, good comedic chops, complete emotional vacuity—that instead of romantic chemistry they generate a sort of giddy, blinding falseness. Director James Mangold (
Walk the Line) has the good sense never to let the harebrained plot stop moving, though the movie's biggest asset may be Cruise's shrewd exploitation of his screw-loose public persona. With Peter Sarsgaard, Viola Davis, and Paul Dano.
By
J.R. Jones