The Last Movie I Saw

I went to see the new movie Knight and Day with pretty low expectations. Those low expectations had nothing to do with the stars, Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, both of whom I generally like (Diaz more than Cruise), especially in straight escapist fare, and this certainly qualified. No, I was a bit leery because the movie was directed by James Mangold, who pretty much always disappoints me. He's been involved with some pretty big-name productions, several of which were also big hits (Walk the Line; the remake of 3:10 to Yuma), but I find his work choppy and unsatisfying. In this new film, he telegraphs jokes and plot points so awkwardly that when they come to fruition it's almost always a letdown rather than a payoff. There's also an odd motif he uses to convey the passage of time via character blackouts, but it amounts to leaving potentially interesting stuff out of the movie (how did the two main characters get off that deserted island?), so what's the point? I can't say I wasn't entertained, because there was enough there to make it a kind of mindless entertainment, but like all of Mangold's films, I'm convinced it would have been handled much better in someone else's hands.