Mr and Mrs Smith Movie Review

Story line

The film begins with John (Brad Pitt) and Jane (Angelina Jolie) Smith in the middle of a session with a marriage guidance counsellor. John is a construction engineer and Jane is in IT, or rather that is what they believe about each other. It turns out that both of them are assassins working for different companies, they each carry out their "work" whilst living seemingly normal lives, for 5 or 6 years they continue this charade, covering their tracks, hiding their true identities from each other. The plot thickens when they both turn up for the same "Mark". There then follows some speedy intelligence work when each tries to find out who the other operative was in the field.

The film now picks up pace and the humour starts to flow, the first instinct of each of them is to kill the other, which they find is not as easy as they might assume, Jane repeats to herself several times that she does not love John, whilst John gets angry at the lengths Jane will go to in an attempt to rectify the earlier bungled operation where both interfered with the others work, resulting in the "Mark" getting away (an embarrassment to them both). Their attractive suburban home in a relatively plush neighbourhood gets a makeover to end all makeovers, and there are glimpses of how they truly feel about each other splattered throughout the film as it takes a few twists and turns.

The final part of the film sees the assassins working side by side as proceedings take yet another twist, the competitiveness and rivalry between them ensures the comedy continues and the action builds to a huge finale.


Score

The music is composed / conducted by John Powell and is in my opinion one of the best aspects of this movie, it keeps the pace moving nicely, adding much to the action scenes in particular. John Powell is also known for his music in such movies as Face Off and The Bourne Identity / Supremacy amongst others.

Extras

On the disc there are:

3 deleted scenes

2 Commentary tracks
--1 Director - Doug Liman and Screen writer Simon Kinberg
--2 The Producers Akiva Goldsman and Lucas Foster

2 Trailers
--1 Teaser
--2 Theatrical

Making a scene - A short feature from The Fox Movie Channel.


Conclusion

After watching this film my immediate thoughts were that I actually did not laugh that much, there are some good one liners throughout, however the fact that the funniest moment in the movie is in the last 10 seconds I think says much about the comedy value of this film. I was certainly entertained by Mr & Mrs Smith, the action is plentiful, the two major stars interact well, and the script is not at all bad. However, what does go in this movie's favour is its ability to entertain more than once, I have watched it 3 times now and unlike some movies I did not find myself wanting to turn it off, in fact the opposite is true as I found myself holding a wry smile whilst looking on at the impressive stunts (Jolie jumping off a balcony was particularly well done) and listening to some extremely good sound effects and music score, I think tells its own story.

So all in all I believe the film satisfies enough to warrant a place in any collection, provided you like the leading actors, and are looking for a film that will not overly tax your intelligence.