Uneven action comedy starring two of Hollywood's biggest and most attractive stars

Rating: 6/10 (23 June 2005)

When it's good, it's good, but it takes way too long to establish the premise. Two rival spies with licenses to kill get married, but they don't know each other's secret. Five or six years into the marriage, they find out and are each ordered to kill the other. That's fine with them, as their marriage is kind of fizzling. It's a golden concept, but the trailers and commercials have already informed 99.99% of the audience of it. We really don't need 40 minutes of Pitt and Jolie acting like a stereotypical cold married couple. Plus, the movie starts with a flashback to when the two met in Bogota, Columbia. Neither seems to wonder at all why the other was in such a turbulent part of the world in the first place. After about 40 minutes, during which I was concentrating on Angelina Jolie's outrageously sexy body and face lest I fall asleep, after the two have found out about each other, it begins to pick up with some very entertaining action sequences. I love how the movie plays the generic problems of married couples against the background of espionage and professional killing. The movie is going along very well for most of its remainder, but, unfortunately, it doesn't end well. They seem to be going for a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ending, but, of course, in a summer blockbuster, that ain't gonna cut it. Vince Vaughn co-stars. I don't know about him. He always seems to be just on the verge of being funny, but he never quite makes it there. Adam Brody, the nerd/hunk second banana from Fox's The O.C., also has a nice little role. He has a couple of the film's funniest lines. The body count of this movie has to be at least at 50, and guns are a'blazin' constantly. The film was rated PG-13 by the MPAA  but only after a sex scene was cut out. You've got to love the MPAA!