Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 2 ratings
After five (or six) years of vanilla-wedded bliss, ordinary suburbanites John and Jane Smith are stuck in a huge rut. Unbeknownst to each other, they are both coolly lethal, highly-paid assassins working for rival organisations. When they discover they're each other's next target, their secret lives collide in a spicy, explosive mix of wicked comedy, pent-up passion, nonstop action and high-tech weaponry.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith is a slick, enjoyable action-comedy that benefits enormously from the electric chemistry between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. The premise — two assassins married to each other — is a genuinely fun high concept, but the film never fully commits to either its comedic or dramatic potential. The plot is breezy but thin, relying heavily on setpiece spectacle rather than narrative depth. The acting is charming rather than remarkable; Pitt and Jolie coast on charisma. Cinematography is competent Hollywood polish — Doug Liman delivers clean, energetic action but nothing visually distinctive. The premise has novelty but the execution is fairly conventional action-comedy territory. The ending deflates into a generic shootout that abandons the sharper marital satire the film occasionally gestures toward, settling for crowd-pleasing action resolution rather than something more satisfying.