I noticed some critics comparing this film to Gigli due to the obvious parallels between the media overload on the personal lives of the stars of each film. This is thoroughly unfair to this film as it never even approaches the wretchedness of Gigli. No matter how annoyed we might become with the omnipresent images of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are of late, the movie itself deserves better comparison.
The movie centers on the wealthy young married couple John Smith (Pitt) and Jane Smith (Jolie). They've been married 5 or 6 years now and the excitement is gone. Perhaps that's because unbeknown to each other, they each earn a living as a high level paid assassin. It's hard to be intimate when you can't even share the most basic elements of your day with your partner. So the Smiths end up discussing the drapes or dinner more than anything else. Not exactly a recipe for romance. The story is framed by trips to a marriage counselor, which serves to highlight just how distant they really are.
Things get stirred up when they are both assigned to take out the same target, which has the side effect of revealing the truth of their lives to each other. In most movies about couples, when betrayal is discovered, it leads to a war of words. In this movie it leads simply to war. The pair attempt to salve their bruised egos by some combination of shooting, detonating or pummeling their spouse into submission. Much to the script's credit, it doesn't end there. Instead it leads to what you might call aggressive marriage counseling in which they attempt to get to the bottom of just who it is they married, with the added obstacle of being chased by scores of black clad assassins. It can be a bit hit or miss but finds a great high point in a chase sequence in which the Smiths fend off pursuers while maintaining an entertaining argument about the state of their marriage.
To say the movie is light on plot is being kind. It covers for this in that most classic of Hollywood methods, blinding us with star power. Finding a more attractive couple than Pitt and Jolie is probably impossible. Each is very skilled at their job, although you can be excused for forgetting that from time to time as they suffer through films below their abilities. This is not a movie to bring out their finer points but it makes solid use of their beauty and more importantly, great chemistry. The two click well on screen, elevating a lot of the material and obscuring much of the rest of it. Whether fighting or making love, they generate volcanic heat and chew through the dialog with great glee.
What keeps this movie from greatness is a third act that aspires to being described as lame. Bullets fly about by the millions toward no apparent purpose or conclusion. It ends so limply you might wonder if they ran out of film and quit rather than going to get more. All the good ideas have long since been used up, leading to an ending that oddly enough reminded me of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. And that tells me that if Butch and Sundance had been armed with a small mountain of automatic weapons and kevlar vests, nobody would remember their movie. Sometimes less is more. Sometimes following events to a logical conclusion makes for a far more satisfying ending than the Hollywood ending.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith could have been a classic if it had stuck to being a dark comedy rather than trying to expand into summer action flick. Director Doug Liman (Go, The Bourne Identity) has a great sense of action and car chases and makes those as entertaining as he can manage. But what the movie needed was more of the interplay between the stars and less trigger pulling. Despite that it manages to be a solidly entertaining movie that most will exit feeling like they got their money's worth. Whether or not they can remember the movie the next day is another question entirely.
- This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
