Brikar

Brad Pitt owns this movie.

There are so few romantic comedies that break the standard romantic comedy mold. Even fewer of them do it by incorporating another genre to broaden the palette. "Shaun of the Dead" does this, and so does "Grosse Point Blank", and now so does "Mr. and Mrs. Smith". The plot of the movie is fairly apparent from the ads: Mr. and Mrs. Smith are assassins who happen to be married to each other... kind of.

It's the kind of stagnated marriage you often see as the butt of all kinds of marriage jokes. The fun, the passion, the energy has been drained out of the relationship, and you've basically just got two stone-cold killers living together in the same house. They both get hired to take out the same target, and end up botching each other's jobs, leading to them discovering each other's true professions. Their bosses give them each 48 hours to kill the other, and with both of them realizing that the love is pretty much gone in their marriage, decide that that's OK with them.

The action sequences are pretty fun to watch. Pitt and Jolie really do a number on that house, as well as a restaurant downtown, a construction site, an office building, a highway, a courthouse, a department store..........

But Brad Pitt owns the movie. Even with the good action, "Mr. And Mrs. Smith" would have fizzled if his line delivery wasn't so spot-on. Pitt gets all the best lines and jokes in the movie, and Jolie is just sort of along for the ride. The ending is a bit abrupt, but the jokes and the action sequences should leave you sufficiently entertained to not be too upset.

If you're bored on a Saturday afternoon, this isn't a bad choice for your matinee-price money.

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Gitch

I agree entirely, and that's pretty much what I wrote on my feedback form. Great fun. I hope they put some effort into the DVD as well.

The big question - will they potentially ruin it with a sequel? My feeling is that the story is finished, but Hollywood is Hollywood...

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Brikar

That's what I thought. I didn't think it was a premise that could be stretched to more than one movie. I thought that perhaps, after having fought off their employers, that the Smiths could start their own assassination agency, which could lead to something interesting, but the dynamic that they had established in the first movie would be gone. Bringing it back would just feel too much like your standard Hollywood retread.

__________________
"A million monkeys typing until the end of time will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Ten thousand monkeys typing for ten thousand years will write a Hemingway. Ten monkeys typing over Columbus Day weekend will give you a Dan Brown."

http://olympusmans.blogspot.com
http://benforrealz.blogspot.com

Cymro

As much as I hate the "holywood hunk" shit surrounding Brad Pitt, I kinda like him beacause he really is quite a good actor, and seems to hate the glamourous bullshit as much as i do. I might go watch this sometime this week.

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"But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those friendly, intelligent, wonderful people...will become as nasty and as violent as the most blood-thirsty klingon."