A well-dressed couple (he's handsome, she's beautiful), seated in plush armchairs next to each other, stares into the camera. A soothing, off camera voice questions them about their marriage. The couple, uncomfortable with his probing questions, lie their way through the session, preferring the façade of complacency over the reality of a rapidly disintegrating marriage. Domestic drama? No, the marriage therapy scene opens Mr. and Mrs. Smith, a big-budget action/thriller/comedy/relationship drama hybrid, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in the lead roles. And before you ask, yes, Pitt and Jolie, individually charismatic, magnetic performers, display physical (and sexual) chemistry in their scenes together, as much as a "PG-13" rating allows, of course.
John Smith (Brad Pitt) and Jane Smith (Angelina Jolie), highly trained international assassins (are there any other kind?), work for rival firms (essentially doubling the premise underlying True Lies by way of Prizzi's Honor). John believes Jane is the CEO of a temp agency. Jane thinks John runs a contracting firm. In both cases, their cover stories allow them to spend time traveling on business, apparently without raising any doubts about the other's real identity (an-above-average suspension of disbelief is required here). Per their assigned "gender" roles, each has a hidden, high-tech weapons cache, Jane in the kitchen, John in the woodshed (perfect for the techno-fetishist). Their marriage, in short, is a sham. But after five or six years of marriage (a running joke is made out of John's inability to remember exactly how long they've been married), their marriage is foundering on inattention and boredom.
After introducing the audience to the Smiths in action (killing, of course, only “bad” men, Irish thugs for John, a vaguely Middle-Eastern arms dealer for a fetish-wearing Jane), the Smiths are inadvertently double-booked for the same assignment on the Mexican border. Crossing paths, they barely escape, but not discovering each other's identity until they've returned home. Not surprisingly, both feel betrayed. Further impetus to their actions is provided by a new assignment: each other. They have forty-eight hours to complete their assignment, or risk the wrath of their shadowy employers. Their sense of betrayal, plus their new assignment, leads to a series of escalating complications, some played for humor, some played purely for action thrills, but most combining the two.
Their rivalry eventually turns on a bravura set piece, combat at close quarters, which leaves no object unbroken. What seems to culminate in a War of the Roses-type ending, however, takes a step back into safer, more predictable, territory. Once the domestic crisis is resolved, narrative momentum begins to drag, with the next complication or plot development sending Mr. and Mrs. Smith into strictly action/thriller territory with a new, external threat. Neither Simon Kinberg (xXx: State of the Union, the forthcoming X-Men 3), the screenwriter, nor Doug Liman (Swingers, Go, The Bourne Identity), the director, cover the sagging narrative via bigger, louder, more explosive set pieces, closing with a running firefight that plays out as an homage to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Oddly, Mr. and Mrs. Smith ends inconclusively, with one major plot thread left unresolved (apparently saved for a sequel, if any).
There's something more troubling than the routine, action-oriented third act. The action scenes are kinetically, tautly, directed by Liman (two stand out: the face-to-face confrontation between the Smiths and an elaborate car chase on a highway), but they're also tinged with an unnecessary cruelty. Obviously, the action scenes centered on the Smiths have their share of black comic moments, but Mr. and Mrs. Smith seems to revel in pushing its “PG-13” rating to its limits. Certainly, Mr. and Mrs. Smith has a high, if bloodless, body count (secondary characters can die without real-world consequences, as long as they don't bleed), but there are other scenes that derive humor from physical violence, cruelty, and humiliation. Liman's direction of The Bourne Identity seemed to indicate a finer sensibility. Although The Bourne Identity's commercial success was due, in large part, to grounded, stunt-driven action scenes, the violence in the film was depicted more realistically (often swiftly). Violence was never used as a pretext for humor.
Despite these misgivings, it's difficult not be entertained by Mr. and Mrs. Smith, especially the humor-driven scenes between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Without them in the leads, the relationship humor would, more often than not, fall flat. If Mr. and Mrs. Smith does well commercially, expect more Pitt/Jolie collaborations in their (and our) future.
© Mel Valentin, 29th May, 2005
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