Mr. And Mrs. Smith

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All appearances to the contrary, the Smiths do not have the perfect marriage. Stuck in suburbia, working their high-powered big city jobs, they may look like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, but there's no getting around the fact they have nothing left to say to each other. Apparently neither even suspects their partner is also their competition in the lucrative but oh-so-secretive assassination biz.

Mr and Mrs Smith: Pitt and Jolie It's kind of ironic that after all the tabloid stories, Mr and Mrs Smith should turn out to be a film about relationships and long-term commitment. ('Happy endings are just stories that haven't finished yet,' pronounces la Jolie in a rare flash of wit.) Just don't imagine anything near as elegant as Prizzi's Honor, which also had a pair of married assassins at each other's throats. This is actually closer to another Kathleen Turner flick, The War of the Roses but with way more fire-power and James Bond-style gadgetry aimed square at the adolescent audience Hollywood likes to target these days. If this describes you, and you're worried about the lack of communication in your marriage, then Mr and Mrs Smith should be mandatory viewing.

Mr and Mrs Smith: Brad Pitt Director Doug Liman first showed his chops with the indie Pulp Fiction-influenced Go, then went mainstream with the very capable thriller The Bourne Identity. But there's going mainstream and then there's going mainstream. Frankly, he doesn't look to have had much control over this over-produced star package. What Liman brings to the movie is the look of an edgy MTV commercial, but that's about it.

Mr and Mrs Smith: Pitt and Jolie The stars look stunning of course, although there's something irritatingly smug about the way bullets bounce off their bronzed perfect bodies. Jolie, in particular, gets every opportunity to show us what she's got. And there's a lot of it. (Feminists will be pleased to see her take the steering wheel in the climactic car chase, but the lads won't mind the massively contrived dominatrix sequence one bit.)

In the end, the whole idea feels pretty thin. There's no real tension because we have a very good idea of how things are going to end up, Mr and Mrs Smith: Angelina Jolie and while it's perfectly entertaining, you won't be rolling in the aisles either. Ludicrously, in the States Liman has had to self-censor the picture's only logical climax to secure that essential PG-13 rating for the cinema release: after beating the heck out of each other and destroying their matrimonial home in the process, Brad and Angelina finally go at it with a vengeance. Fade out. See, you can have 118 minutes of violence in a PG-13, but not two minutes of sex.

And they wonder why DVD is killing the box-office.

Tom Charity
tom.charity@lovefilm.com

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Time Out

The truth is a turn-on for bored married couple John and Jane Smith when they discover theyre both hired assassins,... read more on www.timeout.com

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Instantly forgettable, extremely enjoyable

Tim Turner from Manchester , 11/06/2005

No-one will win any Oscars for this one, and I'll probably have forgotten about this movie in a week. But while it's on, 'Mr and Mrs Smith' is a cracking piece of entertainment. We went to see it on the basis that Doug Liman had made three good pictures ('Swingers', 'Go' and 'The Bourne Identity') and the two stars are usually good value for money. The logic is sound. If you don't like Pitt's excitable boyish persona and Jolie's smouldering, slightly perverse image, you won't like this film. Virtually plotless, with one-liners instead of proper dialogue and built around a succession of effective set pieces, the film is built on the enormous charisma of the two stars, and that turns out to be more than enough. There are a few real surprises (like the ferocity of the Smith's fight with each other halfway through), some genuinely hilarious moments (listen carefully for the joke about 'Fantasy Island'), and it moves along at a cracking pace without ever really drawing breath. It's no classic, but who cares, the film's job is to entertain and it does that perfectly well.

116 out of 132 people found this review helpful

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superb

williamsgwynfa [Highly rated reviewer] , 17/04/2007

this dvd is superb. The film starts with a bored couple, that go to a marriage guidance counsellor, in order to do something, to save their marriage.

They seem a couple like many others, so immersed in their routine that they hardly pay attention to each other.

John Smith (Brad Pitt) is an architect, Jane Smith (Angelina Jolie) works with computers. They have dinner at seven o'clock everyday, and don't talk too much.

But, not all is at it seems in their apparently ordinary lives. As a matter of fact, both are assassins working for rival companies. Neither Jane nor John knows about the extracurricular activities of their other half, despite the fact that they have been married for six years. But soon enough they will find out, as both are assigned the same target, 'The tank' (played by Adam Brody). mayhem ensues.

this movie is an action movie, with lots of guns, knives and bombs etc. the dialogue is sharp, and very funny at times, particularly when the Smith's are bickering.

my husband's favourite line in the movie, was when Jane Smith (Angelina Jolie's character) said to John Smith, (Brad Pitt's character), 'Are you still alive, Baby?' . it is a classic.

this film is well worth renting out.

76 out of 89 people found this review helpful

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Good Blockbuster Fun

Gromit Gromit from Canterbury , 05/04/2006

This is an a-typical hollywood blockbuster summer release. It has all the right ingredients - beautiful people looking suitably beautiful, ridiculously over-the-top stunts, adrenaline oozing from every pore and a script that feels like it was written by the director's five year old son. If you like your movies loud and forgettable, you'll love this...if you expect anything more you will inevitably be disappointed, which in my book makes you an idiot. A good film to test out your new home cinema system.

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Starts well but becomes a shambles

FilmReviewer from Greater Manchester , 26/11/2005

Starts well but becomes a shambles due to a plot that any school kid could have written as their homework plus what's really wrong with this film - Brad Pitt isn't an actor. Where's the emotions? Not from any member of this cast will you see any emotions backing up their actions. For example you're a hostage tied up and 2 people are trying to get information from you - for no apparent reason you volunteer the info from your back pocket - you dont even say 'hey please dont shoot me' - you're a hostage but talk like you're round for a cup of tea - ie. no depth of character, no emotion. At 2 points in the film their feelings change for each other (mr and mrs smith) - these changes are handled with no investment in the characters by the actors - ie. they show us no emotional indications. The action is good and the effects are reasonable but I expected True Lies and got nowhere near that. True Lies will exist in my list of excellent action movies long after the memory of this film has gone. The film also ends very abruptly - this could be to ensure the audience wakes up. It is a film of many wasted opportunities for better acting, better dialogue and a better plot.

Mr. And Mrs. Smith

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