Hollywood tripe at its peak.

Rating: 1/10 (6 July 2005)

OK, here is the deal. I know that a lot of films today are directed by terrible directors(Douglas Liman) with no sense of vision and/or talent, and scripts for those films are written by hapless dingbats(Simon Kinberg) who lack any spark or, once again, talent, even though they speak the Queen's English. Today such collaborations are the norm and most times they are praised by gullible audiences but Mr & Mrs Smith has managed to "raise" the bar slightly, setting the new standard for future films to "reach". No doubt the aforementioned audiences will love this film, despite the fact the movie is terrible in all ways imaginable.
Aimed clearly at the American market it tells a story of two hit men/secret agents or whatever the hell they are supposed to be, who are married to each other yet don't realise their true identities until they are both hired to take out the same target. They mess it up and then they find out about each other, try to hunt one another down, explosions, gunfights, blah, blah, blah....
The cast then, what can be said? Beautiful people as far as they eye can see, most of whom can't act to save their lives. Adam Brody is my particular favourite....aka THE TANK!!! Yeah! He certainly has a built to play someone called THE TANK! The man is a machine, 3 meters tall with arms the size of tree trunks and the "I want to obliterate everyone who stands in my way" look on his face! THE TANK! The unstoppable killing machine! Hell yeah!!! Seriously though, he is the worst cast ever. That skinny, scrawny 12 year-old with no facial hair, "How did he manage to get into this film and play a character called TANK?", one might ask. Simple. The director of Mr & Mrs Smith has produced THE O.C., as well as Bourne Identity/Supremacy and is busy in production of Bourne Ultimatum. In my opinion that is a pretty awful track record, especially the Bourne trilogy that seems to do everything possible to avoid, defile and ruin the original and superior stories of the books but that is a whole different matter entirely....
The rest of the cast are nothing special. There is no chemistry between Brad and Angelina, they just amble through the film somehow, waiting to get their fat paycheques. And why shouldn't they? There is enough in this movie to keep your Average Joe entertained. There are bombs going off, things going "BOOM!" and stuff being set on fire, all the things that would have George W. Bush raving Red Terror Alert. There are people firing guns at each other, very original stuff. In one scene Angelina and Brad unload the whole nine yards at each other yet fail to get a single shot on target. Aren't they supposed to be trained killers? Or are they good enough to dodge bullets? What else is there.....oh yeah, the car chase. Great stuff once again. Brad and Angelina are being chased by some bad people. "The windows are bulletproof." says Angelina as Brad tries and fails to shoot the driver of one of the vehicles. And about 30 seconds later Mr Smith fires few rounds at the body of the car that must have been made out of foil because bullets go right through and thus blowing the car up. Its all very consistent.
The script is another troubling factor in this mind-crippling equation. As mentioned before, it is written by Simon Kinberg, of XXX2 fame. Great stuff, very inspiring. As expected, the dialogue is clumsy, dull and painful to listen to. Not as bad as "Revenge of the Sith" but nowhere near anything that can be passed as "average". In other words, it sucks. And the story sucks too. Hollywood tripe at its peak with plot holes, stupid situations and no substance. I don't really know what happened in the end of the film as I had to leave the cinema to go and watch the paint dry but I doubt there was any sort of a twist or anything that would have made me sit up and get gripped by awe and astonishment.
I don't know, its possible I am being too picky about these things. After all , it is just a stupid little movie with a stupid little storyline and stupid laughs, maybe its not worth taking seriously. Then again, it is 2 hours of your life that you will never get back and when the crunch time comes with Grim Ripper knocking on your door you'll be cursing yourself for wasting those precious 2 hours on watching Mr & Mrs Smith instead of........