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Mr. & Mrs. Smith is the movie that ended Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston's marriage and gave us Brangelina. The film tried to combine a romantic comedy and an action film. It fails on both fronts and does not hold up well fifteen years on.
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie play the Smiths, two assassins that are unaware that the other is an assassin. They first met in a war-torn Bogota. Neither of their cover stories gives any reason for their being in Bogota during a war. Pointing out all the logical fallacies would be too time-consuming, and I am sure I would miss many. The movie opens on a marriage counseling session where both John and Jane are as cold as ever.
The movie tries extremely hard to show the natural chemistry that Brad and Angelina had at the time but, it did not work well for me. The cold and stiff performances do not demonstrate any emotions between the Smiths. The movie goes to great pains to show their feelings as they try to murder each other. They set up missed opportunities to take each other out multiple times but, their tone and delivery just do not make it believable.
In 2014 the world was introduced to John Wick. The film franchise, now three strong, elevated the choreography of a fight scene to previously unseen heights. Revisiting Mr. & Mrs. Smith shows just how far we have come. There is another parallel between the two films, they could even exist in the same universe. The Administration in John Wick is like the organization that Father oversees in the Smith universe. Both groups supervise a New York focused team of assassins. Both movies have assassins attacking other assassins.
The end of Mr. & Mrs. Smith does not make sense and does nothing to resolve my issues with the film. There is a little more chemistry between Pitt and Jolie once they team up after a destructive sex scene. The last fight scene is a massive slaughter of a large army under Father’s direction. After the Smiths are done dispatching a few dozen soldiers they show up again in the marriage counselors’ room. This means that they rebuilt their suburban home and have not moved. I do not understand how Father could let Smiths live after slaughtering his agents. John Wick has a clear deliverable to clear his name, but the Smiths should remain fugitives. The counseling scene is just a poke in the eye to show that nothing that happened in the movie had any consequences.
If you want to watch a romantic comedy I have plenty to recommend. If you want an action movie, I can recommend those as well. If you want a combination of the two be ready for sacrifices. Mr. & Mrs. Smith is just not a great movie. It will retain some significance because of its destruction and creation of Hollywood super couples.