Mr. & Mrs. Smith

What’s the Story?

MR. AND MRS. SMITH centers on married super-assassins John (Brad Pitt) and Jane (Angelina Jolie), who have no idea of each other's occupation. Jane thinks John is the head of a construction firm, while John thinks his wife is in finance. Their marriage is in a bit of a rut until both of them are hired to kill the same man. Amidst all the action, they learn that they share a high-tech, low-affect appreciation for controlled mayhem, which makes them ideal mates after all -- which helps when they join forces for a final shoot-out against their mutual enemies: their heartless corporate employers.

Is It Any Good?

Thinly plotted, over-actionated, and frankly preposterous, Mr. and Mrs. Smith is entertaining and even clever if you take it on its own terms. These would be: the premise is nonsense and the resolution is absurd. In between, you see the gorgeous Pitt and Jolie wrestle, argue, leap, dash, and shoot big guns at each other. Yet the movie offers two surprises. First, Brad Pitt can dance. And not only in the sense that he turns a decent tango with Jolie in a flashback scene, but also, more enchantingly, in his performances with inanimate objects, a la Fred Astaire or even Buster Keaton. Pitt leaps through hedges, flies over furniture, juggles a teacup in one scene and a large weapon in another.

Genre-mixing is the film's second good idea. Equally cocky and apprehensive, John and Jane pretend to be happily married (she buys dreadful draperies, he doesn't notice she's added peas to the dinner menu) even as they live separate lives (they hide their weapons stashes in gendered spaces, hers behind the oven, his in the basement).