Average But Controversial Leads Make The Movie Something Else

Rating: 8/10 (5 January 2012)

Many married couples have secrets, but one pair of lovebirds discover they've both been living dangerous secret lives in this action thriller laced with comedy entitled,Mr. & Mrs. Smith.This was directed by Doug Liman and written by Simon Kinberg. The original music score was composed by John Powell.
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt and play Jane Smith and John Smith, a suburban couple whose marriage has started to go a bit stale after five or six years. Both wish for more excitement in their relationship, but as it happens, each of them is finding plenty of thrills elsewhere. Both Jane and John are world-class assassins who will take on perilous missions for the right price, but neither is aware of the other's secret life - Jane thinks her husband runs a successful construction company, and John believes his wife works on Wall Street. However, when John and Jane are both assigned to take out the same target, one Benjamin Danz, they become aware of each other's secret lives, and suddenly both their careers and their marriage go through some dramatic and potentially deadly changes.The newly-rekindled Smith partnership is quickly threatened by their employers, who have now decided to eliminate the couple. John's best friend and coworker, Eddie, turns down a bounty of $500,000 for each Smith, but John and Jane find themselves under fire from an army of assassins. Fending off an attack which blows up their house, the Smiths steal their neighbor's minivan and successfully destroy three pursuing armored vans of attackers, all while bickering over their fighting styles and newly-discovered personal secrets. After meeting with Eddie, the Smiths decide to fight together to preserve their marriage. They kidnap Danz from his high-security prison in order to give their employers something they want more than the Smiths. Danz reveals that he was merely bait, hired jointly by their employers after it was discovered that the Smiths were married, in the hopes of having one Smith kill the other.John and Jane forgo their separate contingency plans and make their stand together.
The pretty on screen union of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie is the only thing Mr. & Mrs. Smith offers an audience beyond a relentlessly repetitive series of gunfights and car chases wherein so many bullets are fired that you feel like you're witnessing an average film.The chemistry generated by on screen movie stars are palpable enough to make this a thoroughly enjoyable and satisfying despite of weak writing and one too many explosions and action scenes.Also,this was one controversial film as Pitt and Jolie started to develop their off-screen romance.