Mr. and Mrs. Smith
Studio: Twentieth Century Fox
Rated: PG-13
Website: http://www.mrandmrssmithmovie.com/
Release Date: 2005-06-10
Cast: Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Adam Brody, Vince Vaughn, Angela Bassett
Director: Doug Liman
Screenwriter: Simon Kinberg, Jez Butterworth
WorkNameSort: Mr. and Mrs. Smith
Our Rating: 1.00
Less a movie than a filmed pitch “They’re married, they’re both spies, but neither knows it!” Mr. and Mrs. Smith manages to offer even less than its threadbare premise. A Maxim-style Brad Pitt and weirdly pixilated-looking Angelina Jolie slowly tumble to the fact that they’re both happily sociopathic assassins for competing spy agencies. After some initial tussling and Pitt pouting when he learns her kill count is 360 to his measly 65 they fall in love while killing hundreds of anonymous bounty hunters. At first, we were thrown by the frame-littering of Christian ephemera (our chipper killers even show up in “Jesus Freaks” tees, for reasons unknown), but as the body count mounted, the significance of the design scheme’s omnipresence became clear: Smith is the Bush-era True Lies, positing mass murder as cool as long as there’s a cross on your neck and nothing in your brain. Talk about getting the movies we deserve.
This article appears in Jun 8-14, 2005.