Neither The Humour Nor The Action Are As Good As I Was Expecting

Rating: 5/10 (18 March 2009)

Let's start with the positive. I liked the basic storyline. John and Jane are both assassins working for rival criminal organizations of some sort. They meet while on an assignment in Colombia and fall in love and get married, but neither knows what the other does for a living. Unfortunately, when their respective organizations discover that they're now a couple, they order them to kill each other, and when that doesn't happen they join forces to eliminate them both. That sounded creative and intriguing. I also liked both Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in the title roles. They worked pretty well together and they brought a lot of energy to their roles, as well as doing a good job of portraying the mix of emotions required: bored in their marriage after "five or six years" (John doesn't seem sure!), desperately trying to kill each other one minute after they find each other out, then desperately in love the next. The opening and closing scenes in the therapists' office (mostly the opening) were also quite humorous. For all those positives, though, there was a lot here that didn't work.
The pacing was off. The humour here seemed sporadic and inconsistent. Actually, aside from that opening scene there really wasn't that much that I found funny. This movie would have worked well as a comedy with some action thrown in; instead, it seemed to want to be an action movie with a bit of comedy every now and then. The action itself was restricted largely to the last third or so of the movie, and then consisted mostly of a gigantic shootout. If you like guns blazing I guess it was exciting, but I found it became old pretty quickly. To be blunt, I was expecting something a lot more entertaining.