*** (out of ****)
Starring Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Vince Vaughn, Kerry Washington, Adam Brody, and Keith David
Directed by Doug Liman & written by Simon Kinberg
2005
120 min PG13
“Do you ever have any trouble sleeping afterwards?” the wife-assassin asks the husband-assassin. “No,” he says. And that’s how it should be. As soulless, mass-produced, super-slick Hollywood entertainments go, “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” ranks ahead of the recent glut of comic book movies but behind the “Ocean’s” flicks. Don’t fool yourself: no one came to Hollywood with nothing but pluck, the money in his pocket, and a screenplay for “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” Still, it’s not the end of the world to see a movie that isn’t trying to change your life, every now and then.
Even if the previews tell you otherwise, “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” is not a spy movie at all. It’s a fluffy piece of wish fulfillment for all the couples who’ve ever felt their marriage stagnate. Which is to say, every couple that hasn’t gotten a divorce. All that’s missing (and rightfully so) are the two of them waking up at the end. What wife hasn’t felt like beating her fella to pieces? What husband hasn’t been so frustrated by the status quo that he feels like razing their house to the ground? What couple doesn’t need a good screaming match every now-and-again to breech the inevitable distance, resulting in the sense of “starting over?” What couple doesn’t feel like it met long ago in exotic, easier, and more dashing times, and now feels it is under attack by a thousand voices saying “don’t be married!”? Few couples ever see those voices take up submachine guns and nightvision goggles, but whatever.
The Smiths (Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie) are trapped in a suburban routine, with a vast, unspoken gulf growing between them. (“Could you pass the salt?” “The salt is in the middle of the table.”) But it turns out they’re both secret agents, each working for competing agencies, and they’ve never known it! Hurrah! The movie is divided into three distinct acts. First, neither of the Smiths know about the other’s double life, and we see them sneaking past each other to go off and save (or attack) the free world. Then they find out about each other and it’s killing time. Then they join forces. Pitt works at a junkshop of dirty masculinity, where he and his unshaven cohort (an uncredited Vince Vaughn) trade deadpan barbs. Jolie works in all-babe central; think the femme pilots from “Goldfinger” updated by Victoria’s Secret. Then try to spot the chick from “House M.D.”
Pitt is essentially playing the same low-talking and capable smoothie from “Ocean’s Eleven” and Jolie of the Giant Lips keeps up (just like her father, it can be said that she has “a real purty mouth”). Director Doug Liman (“The Bourne Identity”) does his best Soderbergh impersonation: all the jokes are played low, quick, and under-the-breath, beneath quick edits, shaky handheld camerawork, and giddy pop music. This is a movie that needs to be pumping ahead; if we were given any dead time to reward the actors for their witticisms they just wouldn’t be funny. It’s not so much that the one-liners are so good as that we enjoy the atmosphere of nonchalant delivery. I like that we’re not expected to care about anybody or anything on the screen. “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” knows the score: we’re here to have a good time, some laughs and some thrills, and we don’t need any sugary stuff getting in the way. Limon made his first splash with “Swingers,” a movie that he urgently wanted to make, but this movie and his “Bourne Identity” are the work of a seasoned professional, about seasoned professionals, and they don’t really ask us to feel.
I also like how “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” leaves out everything it doesn’t need. The lack of specificity concerning John and Jane Smith make their problems seem universal. They never get real names. The ideologies of the agencies and their spies are never specified; we never know if they’re fighting for good or for awesome. The result is that we don’t really learn anything about the marriage of the Smiths, but just marriage in general. No, really, they only have two “special memories,” and they’re awfully generic. They don’t have “their song,” “their story,” or recurrent “catch phrases.” And, of course, no one seems to care how many times logic is pushed aside for a setpiece or a good spat. I’d like to live in a neighborhood where twenty minutes of machinegun fire only summons two neighbors and couple beat cops. No, wait, I would hate to live there.
And what was the last Hollywood movie to celebrate marriage besides just before the closing credits, anyway? “The Thin Man?” I jest. It was probably “True Lies,” the Schwarzenegger vehicle with a virtually identical plot as “Smith.” Pitt has the Schwarzenegger role, Tom Arnold is the wisecracking buddy, and since the governator and “True Lies” director James Cameron lean a little righter than Doug Liman, the wife was a wife and not a spy. Or maybe it was just a different time—a simpler, more innocent 1994. There’s a good essay in how “True Lies”—cumbersome at 140+ minutes and surprisingly maudlin—gave way over a dozen years later to the slick, unfeeling efficiency of “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.”
One day, in a moment of snootiness, I might regret going three stars on “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” But any movie that makes me nudge my wife because of something the husband says, and makes her want to squeeze my arm and say “I wuv voo!” must be doing something right. Plus there’s this great look that Pitt gives the camera on the dance floor…oh, see for yourself. “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” is a good date movie for that couple that’s too busy to see more than three movies a year. It’s best at one of those theaters where you can get a meal and a drink, or rented and watched with a bottle of wine.
Finished Tuesday, June 14th, 2005
Copyright © 2005 Friday & Saturday Night
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