An action movie without the action

Rating: 4/10 (2 July 2005)

Mr & Mrs Smith is one those tricks Hollywood plays up on you - giving you commercials of an action-packed movie, setting up a delicious scene in the first minutes of the movie - and then delivering almost none of it. Mr & Mrs Smith tries to be a different action movie by completely doing away with genre norms and taking heavy dives into drama. Unfortunately, with the actors chosen, the effect is completely lost. Brad Pitt is bearable, but Angelina Jolie simply screams "Tomb Raider" throughout the movie. Perhaps it is a sign of the weak market of female action stars, with Jolie being the best of the poor, but the movie falls as much on her account as it does on the script. Do you really want to be using your entertainment minutes on watching everyday trudgery, albeit with an unusual hook? It's like The Incredibles with real actors - super-people having to do with everyday life. Unlike The Incredibles, though, the movie has no red line to carry it through, and drags on all over the big screen. There's likely a sequel coming - there better be, with all the setup this movie squanders its screen time on.