Bring back the Hitchcock!

Rating: 1/10 (18 November 2005)

Worthless is a word I rarely use about movies (I can find some good in just about any piece of junk), but MR. & MRS. SMITH comes as close as any film I've seen in long while. I find this particularly disheartening from a director like Doug Liman, whose past work in both independent and mainstream ("Swingers," "Go" and "The Bourne Identity") I've loved. But the worthless, pointless, unreal characters on display here are mind-blowing. Ditto the "attitude" that passes for performance from leads Jolie and Pitt.
From the first scene, one cannot help but question how these two supposedly top-of-the-line (in intelligence and skill) assassins could not know and would not bother to check into what the other does for a living--not to mention that the people they work for would wait "five, six years" before showing any concern. But then, if Liman and writer Simon Kinberg had acknowledged any of this, there would have been no movie. Know what? There shouldn't have been.
Yeah, yeah--I do realize that the film has now grossed around $300,000 worldwide. So what? We've gleefully sunk how many billions into Iraq? Money, dear viewers, can be wasted in all kinds of rotten ways.