The premise of Mr. & Mrs. Smith is simple enough: John and Jane Smith (Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie) are a happily married couple who work as assassins for rival firms. Neither is aware of the other's occupation, and, to the outside world, they look like a traditional, upper-class suburban couple, albeit without the dog and the 2.5 kids. In fact, to keep the spark in their marriage of five or six years, they visit a marriage counselor. Then, one unfortunate day, a client double-books a hit, with John and Jane unknowingly assigned to eliminate the same target. When their take-down schemes prove to be incompatible, they lose the mark and discover a few things about each other. The resulting domestic strife makes the events of War of the Roses seem tame by comparison.
When director Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity) focuses on the characters and their non-traditional relationship, he's on safe ground. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie smolder, and their chemistry (regardless of whether it did or did not expand beyond the screen) couldn't be better. Whether they're shooting at each other, tossing around double entendres, or ripping each other's clothing off, Mr. and Mrs. Smith's two stars are sexy and magnetic. Foreplay for the Smiths involves not only disrobing, but disarming. And Simon Kinberg's screenplay gives the actors plenty of delicious lines to chew on.
Unfortunately, the script also calls for too much action, and that's where everything falls apart. Although Liman tries to juice things up by using atypical camera angles, all this does is to lend an artistic flavor to a series of otherwise banal explosions, shoot-outs, and car chases. The film has so much action padding that it becomes tiresome after a while. Ten or fifteen years ago, this sort of thing might have been cutting edge, but the bar has been raised so many times that not even a car racing the wrong way on a freeway can generate more than a half-hearted shrug.
