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MR. AND MRS. SMITH Send This Review to a Friend
Some husbands and wives would like to kill each other merely for domestic reasons. John Smith (Brad Pitt) and Jane Smith (Angelina Jolie), both assassins, get surprise assignments. Neither knows the other’s profession, and now he is supposed to kill her, and she is to knock him off. Their marriage has been a bust, anyhow, so what’s the problem?
“Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” primarily a vehicle to team the two over-publicized stars, spends heavy duty time with John and Jane unleashing a versatile array of weaponry against each other until they get to the point of exhaustion. Then, they discover, all the violence has revived their sexual attraction and they forge a new bond, beginning to confess all the lies upon which their marriage has been built. Now, it is the Smiths against their respective lethal organizations.
Doug Liman has directed this generally silly and noisy movie from a screenplay by Simon Kinberg. There are few moments of what passes for wit. A domestic scene in which each becomes suspicious of how the other intends to kill at dinner offers some smiles. In their moments of mutual confessions there are a few amusing lines, and there is the occasional tossed off smart-alecky remark.
But “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” for all its high-tech destruction and what perhaps is meant to satirize marital tensions, is really about watching the beautiful Jolie and her generous lips, and the handsome Pitt. As for on-screen chemistry, there doesn’t really seem to be that much between them. Both look as if it is playtime, for which they know they are getting richly paid. The joke is on us. A 20th Century Fox release.
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