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One would think that the combustible chemistry between two of the sexiest actors on the planet would be enough to sustain a movie. Unfortunately, in “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” the relationship of the name characters lacks any spark, and the movie is further burdened by trying to maintain this luke-warm romance for two whole hours.
Jane and John Smith find themselves trapped in a loveless marriage, as we learn from their brief visit with a faceless marriage counselor in the film’s first scene. The couple seems like any ordinary married couple: the initial meeting was hot, the sex was great and the idea of romantic love fueled them, or so we are led to believe. Now he can’t remember if it has been five or six years since they married, and she quibbles with the therapist about whether “zero” or “one” would be the baseline in determining the numeric heat of their sex life. There are a few witty exchanges between the couple in this scene and scattered throughout the movie, but it is hard to tell if the audience is laughing due to the character’s comedic timing or if they just think it is cute to see Brad and Angelina ‘frustrating’ one another, pretending not to get along well when we all know they surely must have been having animal-style sex during the filming.
The marriage suffers from an all-too familiar scenario: she wants him to do things her way, such as agreeing to interior decorating decisions, while he languishes about due to indifference and apathy. The banter between the two works in places at the beginning, but much of the success comes from the fact that we already know what lurks around the corner - both of these hotties are trained assassins, and as luck would have it, they have been set up on missions to destroy one another. What follows is a rather boring game of cat-and-mouse, punched up with the occasional clever line from Vince Vaughn, who here plays an assassin plagued with misogyny and the inability to move out of his mother’s house. Give him this, Vince plays “Vince” better than anyone else.
The story fails not only due to the weak relationship between the two leads, but, also, the plot seems to have been thrown together haphazardly. We never fully understand by whom these assassins are hired or what their backgrounds are. All we know is that Mrs. Smith runs a cracker-jack squad of assassins that resembles Ford Modeling Studios and that Mr. Smith covers as a contractor out of an old mill where he receives support from two old-folks. OK, (dir.) Mr. Liman, we will go along with your premise, only because we love looking at Angelina.
As the movies progresses and the estranged couple realizes that they may, in fact, love each other, and therefore can not commit to pulling the trigger, it becomes a little more evident amidst all of the pyrotechnics and John Woo-like fight scenes that this movie is supposed to be about relationships and the inherent difficulty of marriage, regardless of the participants occupation. A bunch of marital maxims are tossed back and forth between the stone-faced Jolie and Pitt; lines like, “Not until you stand to lose something do you realize its significance.” And the idea that, “We have to stay and fight this thing to the end.”
Liman, very heavy-handedly, is trying to make the point that whether one wants more control than the other, whether your spouse drives you nuts with their quirks, or whether you often times can not get on the same page, that being on ‘a team’ with someone and fighting for your marriage and for each other, in the end, is all that matters. And in case we did not clearly receive the message from the script and bland acting, the soundtrack plays “Making Love Out of Nothing at All,” by Air Supply (to not-so humorous effect) during one of the last major sequences. Ironically, the movie seems to be doing just this – making a fragmented love story out of nothing at all. We got the message, Doug, it is just hard to care about the love lives of two people who seemingly have so little chemistry. A film with this many explosions usually works to at least keep our attention, near the end of this one we had trouble keeping our eyes open.
One Redeeming Note: Angelina Jolie constantly made our jaws drop with even the slightest glance. She is undoubtedly the sexiest woman on the planet. (Sorry, Jennifer Connelly)
"Mr. and Mrs. Smith"
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what he said
Brad Pitt is a redeeming note too, but I prefer him muddy, unshaven and thickly accented as in "Snatch". For movies like this you've got to allow yourself the film genre called "stupid fun". Have fun watching it, then instantly forget it. Don't even talk about it in the car on the way home. Don't waste your breath complaining, it's as pointless as getting angry at daytime talk shows because you've already proved to the movie industry that you were intrested... Damn attractive celebrities! They get me every time!
i agree...and when we reviewed it before it came out we suggested it should be a good 'popcorn' movie...but it wasn't even that. i wasn't expecting French Connection, but this film was pretty easy to poke holes in and not entertaining enough to be good fluff, i don't really think.
but, again, they are hot, so that helps.
Angelina Jolie is the most overrated "attractive" person ever. Ever. I swear I like girls.
i am not saying she is hot becuase of how she has been 'rated;' i am just saying she is hot, period. trust me, see the movie, if only for that.
ps. suuure you like girls, J ;)
i know better and have the bruises to prove it