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Mr and Mrs Smith
Mr and Mrs Smith is a Big Mac and fries. It's manufactured pap, it's the brain-off option and, other than postponing hunger for another few hours, it has nothing worthwhile going for it at all. Well, except Brad Pitt. So it's a Big Mac, fries and a beer.
Vince Vaughn (Swingers, Starsky and Hutch, Dodgeball) is beginning to grate - he plays the same wise-ass character in every movie, with varying degree of irritating twat thrown in for good measure. After Be Cool, he was treading on thin ice and the skating continues here, his performances teetering on the edge of fingernails-down-blackboard without ever quite falling in. I can only hope he tones it down for the upcoming Wedding Crashers or I might start avoiding movies with him in altogether. And to make things worse, Adam Brody (from The OC) seems to have modelled himself on all of Vaughn's irksome qualities. Brad Pitt however, sparkles as always and saves the movie from becoming tiresome too early. At two hours though, even he can't repel the boredom throughout - and at the time of writing this, less than a day after seeing it, I genuinely can't remember how the movie ends. I know I sat there and saw it, but I guess I must have been more interested with going home rather than giving a stuff about the story. I'm fairly sure that's never happened to me before and is surely not a good sign, neither for the movie nor for my ailing synapses.
Mr and Mrs Smith is an ordinary, humdrum romantic action movie which makes no attempt to do anything new or win any awards. It's a pleasant enough place for your eyes to rest while your brain goes to sleep, it's a movie for people who want to use up an evening, rather than make the most of it. Much like going to McDonalds. I enjoyed this film: I think the average moviegoer will enjoy it: Testosterone Satisfaction Rating: Brainless guns and Angelina in a rubber dress. To enjoy this film you should: have nothing better to do.
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Doug Liman's directorial CV is pretty impressive so far - The Bourne Identity, Swingers, Go - all top notch
productions with a sassiness setting them apart from the dross. It seems odd then, that Mr and Mrs Smith should
feel so drearily ordinary. The phrase "sell-out" springs to mind, but then I suppose you can't blame him - none
of us go to work for the fun of it. Well, unless you're the kind of sad monkey who writes movie reviews.
As for the action, I have to concede that it's pretty good. There are some very nifty computer-enhanced sequences
that are so impressively manipulated that you only know that they're computer-enhanced because no-one would be mad
enough to do them for real. Well, not for the pittances that stuntmen get, anyway. The inevitable car chase is all squeals
and bangs without any apparent planning or continuity, but it works in an MTV kind of way. The myriad of gunfights
are exciting but equally silly - as usual the main characters can evade a million bullets and survive the twenty that
hit them, but if any other hitman gets a cut on his finger, he falls dead to the ground. And in the middle of this,
Brad and Angelina maintain a love story marginally less plausible than the verdict of the average court case. It
seems strange to say this about a film with so much violence and gun-play, but Mr and Mrs Smith will probably appeal
more to women than men, purely because of the movie-long romance. The men in the audience benefit from a camera that
clearly appreciates Angelina's curves and will emit the occasional chuckle along the way, but I can't see it making
any man's top 10 of the year.
