Mostly fun, unfinished, but it's no Prizzi's Honour

Rating: 8/10 (16 June 2016)

My daughter and I love this movie. We watch it every time it's on TV. It's the humour that gets us. As for my review, I liked the performances of the leads; their chemistry is palpable, and you can see that this was the movie that started their real life together. Vince Vaughn is funny, but underused. It's never revealed how John's and Jane's respective employers didn't know their stars were married for "5 or 6 years", but it must be a horrible violation if two competing assassination "companies" are willing to join forces to kill them. If only we knew the details of why. Prizzi's Honour this ain't, but it doesn't really try to be. Unfortunately, all the cool, slick fun of the first 75 minutes, and even the first few minutes of the confrontation with the ninjas, degrades in the final shootout: as others have said, the ninjas with machine guns shoot like storm troopers, while John and Jane perform their ballistic ballet. My biggest complaint about the movie is the end: are we to believe that, despite the fact that two assassination organisations merged for the express purpose of destroying John and Jane, now that they've killed all the ninjas, the kill order has been lifted and they're safe? I mean, it's not like they ran away; they even continued going to the same marriage counsellor. The end feels as if that's where the story should be starting. It's a fun and funny movie, but it feels unfinished.