Underwhelming

Rating: 5/10 (22 June 2005)

Mr. and Mrs. Smith had just about everything one could ask for. Two actors who, when cast correctly, could excel. If you dispute that, you obviously haven't seen Fight Club or Girl, Interrupted. A premise that, if executed properly, could translate into an awesome story. A budget that, if utilised properly, could fund a no-holds-barred, knuckle-down action sequence or four. You may have noticed by now that I am qualifying every one of those statements. The reason I did so is because the people responsible for this film did none of these things. The actors, while doing a credible job, get to capitalise on few, if any, of their strengths. Jolie does a great job of acting out the conflict she feels at her assignment, but Pitt is not even able to play to the sick sense of humour that he showed he had down to an art in Fight Club (which is somewhat amusingly referenced late in this film).
The story is as deep as a puddle, which is the first strike against the film. Two mercenaries meet while on assignment in a South American country where the police have the power to detain anyone they feel looks suspicious. Two mercenaries get married. Two mercenaries live together for six years without any idea of what the other's real profession is. Fast forward six years, and both mercenaries are seeing a marriage counselor because they are starting to tire of their union. Then they both find themselves on the same assignment. Once they learn the truth behind one another's cover stories, all hell breaks loose, and both of their agencies decide they are a liability. Cue some Rambo-esquire scenes where both professionals hit their enemy with two or three out of four shots, while the enemy cannot hit the sidewalk with a can of paint. Admittedly, one of these sequences where four cars are progressively destroyed was a clever idea, but the lack of any depth to any of the characters leaves one checking their watch as the frames roll by.
The second problem, which merely serves to compound the first, is that the director seems to have a major problem with letting the audience see what is happening during his action sequences. The camera weaves about in so many directions during the climactic battle that one cannot help but think the director was drunk. I've heard the defence used for this technique so many times that it is meant to place the viewer in the action. It does nothing of the kind. Fortunately, it only gave me headaches this time, but as one popular critic puts it, the first rule of any action scene should be that the audience gets to see the action. The second rule of any action scene should be that ***the audience gets to see the action***. How many times do we have to point this out before Hollywood gets the message and realised that replacing the current MPAA with one whose colons aren't able to produce diamonds is the answer, not producing films these morons consider "safe" by shaking the hell out of the camera?
Apart from the shaky-cam, which has caused me to bite chunks out of my tongue in some films, Mr. and Mrs. Smith also suffers from a distinct lack of structuring. It is almost as if Simon Kinberg decided we would automatically care about his married heroes, and decided they did not need any background. You know about as much about them when the film ends as you do when the opening credits roll. Compare this with Grosse Pointe Blank, where John Cusack's character starts out as your everyday man in a job he is bored with, reunites with an old girlfriend, starts comparing his past with a number of more domestic possible futures, and discovers he is wanted to hit a target that makes him have a crisis of conscience. I doubt that the people who put Mr. and Mrs. Smith together would even be able to spell the phrase "crisis of conscience". Neither of these assassins even indicate that they know what a crisis or a conscience is. When both actors do scenes in which they indicate they feel their marriage is boring and formulaic, their body language suggests that they believe this of the film. The audience certainly will about fifty-five minutes in.
There are films that are so good they achieve immortality, both for themselves and the people who made them. There are some films that are so stupid they are brilliant, or so bad they are excellent. Mr. and Mrs. Smith fits into neither of these categories. It is not even good enough to pass for a mildly distracting action film. Nor is it good enough to pass for a saleable Mills & Boon. By failing to fall into any of these applicable categories, it falls into No Man's Land. See it if you can get in cheaply, but otherwise, it is not worth the effort.