Cotton candy

Rating: 4/10 (27 March 2006)

John and Jane Smith are elite and deadly assassins working for separate agencies. As irony would have it, they are a bit too good at concealing their true selves, and neither knows that the other is their biggest rival. However this clever set-up, which could serve for a truly entertaining spoof on not just spy films, but a whole host of things simply loses it's footing and not only bites off more than it can chew, it doesn't even bite the right thing.
From a brilliantly funny first part is quickly ruined by largely pathetic emotion scenes which are sorely out of place here. If it is a goofy escapist action comedy, fine, nothing wrong with that, but KEEP IT THAT WAY! Also many of the scenes are very poorly made and given the production values and talent involved this is yet another $100 million dollar lesson that Hollywood is so bad at learning: firepower, financial power, and star-power will not get you a good movie. They may be initial steps for a movie, especially escapist entertainment like this, but more is needed.
Doug Liman, director of the gritty and good "The Bourne Identity" may simply be not familiar with the brainless action movie formula and this film shows that well. Things constantly change just so that scenes can end and they go into more, sometimes even more pointless, scenes. Take the car chase - it starts with bullet-proof BMWs attacking our heroes on the road. Yet, the scene ends with Mrs. Smith - shooting a pistol! - literally tearing them to pieces with bullets. The problems don't stop there. Liman's choreographed ballet/shootout climax has our heroes jumping out into a hail of bullets and in a swirling dance take out all their attackers. Maybe Liman was very unhappy with the ending to "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," but this is just poor and a very rushed and not thought out way to end a scene. It almost seems that during production they got bored on a daily basis and decided to wrap things up in time to watch The Simpsons.
So, in the end, all you have is cotton candy - looks yummy, but dissolves into nothing special all too soon. 4/10
Rated PG-13: violence and intense action