Could have been great with a better script

Rating: 7/10 (2 December 2005)

The premise to this film is great, even if it's not completely original. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie--two of the biggest current box-office draws, and deservedly so for the most part--are a couple whose marriage is on the rocks. But they have even bigger problems. Despite living together for "five or six" years, their identities and professional lives, as each other believes they know them, are lies. They're really both "secret agents"/hit persons, regularly trotting off to exotic locales to kill. When the truth is discovered, can their relationship stand the strain? We get to see both aspects of their lives, with the result being an unusual but potentially captivating mixture of well-crafted action/adventure scenes somewhere between James Bond and the Mission Impossible films and a light romantic comedy, a bit heavier on the turmoil than usual. The premise has the potential to fuel a more adult Spy Kids-like film.
Unfortunately, Mr. & Mrs. Smith suffers from a couple major flaws. This is a plot and character-driven film, but the script leaves the backstory, motivations, justifications and character development by the wayside, focusing instead on what writer Simon Kinberg must think is extremely clever dialogue. It's not--I may have only chuckled a couple times, and instead the audience is left in the dark wondering just who the protagonists are and why they would have the reaction they do when the big realization about their partner arrives.
We never learn just who they work for (hence the confusion about whether they're secret agents, hit persons, or something else altogether), why their employers would amount to "enemy" organizations, and why Mr. & Mrs. Smith would unquestioningly follow particular orders, especially when at the same time, insofar as the characters are developed, neither seems like a "yes-man" who would follow _anything_ that anyone says unquestioningly.
By the same token, we know that their marriage is on the rocks, especially because the film begins with Mr. & Mrs. Smith talking to a marriage counselor, but we never know why. Their marital problems are not further developed than the fact that Mr. Smith dislikes Mrs. Smith's cooking, Mrs. Smith thinks that Mr. Smith is somewhat slothlike and irresponsible at home, and they do not communicate as much or as well as they should. That, and/or similar states, describes plenty of married people whose relationships are not threatened.
Instead, the film sets its sights on dialogue that Kinberg must think is hip and witty, delivered in a fairly rapid pace. The dialogue isn't horrible, but it's certainly not hip and witty, and director Doug Liman--who has been hit and miss--he directed the fantastic remake of The Bourne Identity (2002), but also did the awful Go (1999)--encourages Pitt and Jolie to sound affected and pretentious far too often. Aside from this, Pitt and Jolie do an admirable job, and of course they're pleasant to look at, but you have to wonder why they wouldn't be more careful in choosing a script and more adamant against the occasional bad directorial advice.
The action scenes are competent to good technically. A lot of juice is drained from them because of the underdeveloped story--we need to understand these people and their situation better to be on the edge of our seats, and the scenes are a bit generic (even more so the score), but for a big action fan, as I am, they're entertaining enough. A car chase near the end of the film (no surprises there) and a big fight in a house are extremely well done, exciting and deliver a few of the funnier lines at the same time. But a couple scenes where Mr. & Mrs. Smith are practically invincible--for example, standing in the middle of a hail of bullets and small explosives, protected only by bullet-proof vests but receiving nary a scratch--tend to negate the great scenes.
You could look at the whole movie, even the action/adventure scenes, as more of a metaphor for a couple beginning the process of separation or divorce. It's not uncommon to hear of people having secret lives that a spouse is unaware of, and of course most people become quite nasty in the separation process, other people become involved, and so on. Seen this way, Mr. & Mrs. Smith is potentially cleverer, but again the script needed much more work for us to understand and care about the characters.
Overall, Mr. & Mrs. Smith is just so-so, as the result of a balancing act between good points and bad points. In my rating system a 7 is equivalent to a "C", but this one is really a low "C", which means it almost doesn't earn credit.