Mr. & Mrs. Smith Movie Review

Palpable sexual electricity between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie provides "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" with all the power it needs to overcome a very silly plot about suburbanites whose waning marriage is revitalized by discovering the hard way that they're both undercover assassins.

Arguably the two sexiest movie stars in America, and both underappreciated for their considerable talents as a result, the pair make trying to kill your spouse seem entertaining and almost erotic.

Directed by Doug Liman ("The Bourne Identity") with tongue-in-cheek panache, and an eye for metaphorical conflicts of real marriage, the film opens with John and Jane Smith (Pitt and Jolie) in couples therapy.

"How often do you have sex?" ask the off-screen shrink. "I don't understand the question," Pitt deadpans in response.

After a flashback establishing, with surprising credibility, how they met (both posing as tourists while on assignment in Columbia) and came to fall in love while pulling the wool over each other's eyes, Liman spends a reel humorously juxtaposing their mundane domesticity with their killer instincts before setting them at odds: John and Jane are given the same target and need to leave no witnesses, but catch each other in the act, leading to a very uncomfortable reunion at home after a hard day's work.

"I missed you, honey" Jane meows ironically. "I missed you too," John retorts with a teeth-gritted kiss on the cheek.

Then comes the shootout that literally tears their house apart. (His arsenal is hidden underneath a backyard shed, hers behind the oven.)

While trying to kill each other, Pitt and Jolie trade double-entendres and dangerous looks that give the film tingle and zing, but underneath the farce and the firepower this couple is genuinely trying to figure out if they can save their marriage. It's the casting of these two stars that makes the relationship work on all levels. Together they have wickedly sharp comedic timing and are just as believable arguing about new curtains as they are brandishing machine guns. The fun the actors are having comes through in their performances, which take an amusingly sultry turn when the Smiths being to think they've been set up.

Written by Simon Kinberg ("xXx: State of the Union") but significantly punched up by Liman, "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" is clever and satisfying, but what it's not is smart. Plot holes abound, and the picture has so many trappings of brain-dead Hollywood action-movie excess that it's easy to imagine how bad it would have been without this particular director and these particular stars.

With Pitt's obnoxious munitions-man sidekick (Vince Vaughn), cartoonishly high-tech gadgetry, the chrome-and-computer-screen overkill of the headquarters for both anonymous assassin agencies, and the fact that Jolie's team is an all-girl operation, this flick is constantly in danger of becoming too asinine for its own good. This is never more true than in the clumsily, overly convenient finale that doesn't stand up to commonsense scrutiny. (It's a shame Liman fails to recognize a perfect opportunity for a convention-busting, "Butch Cassidy"-like ending.)

"Mr. and Mrs. Smith" is at its best when all of this ornamentation is stripped away, and John and Jane are forced to rely only on their resourceful wits -- which is fortunately just enough of the movie to make it worth the price of admission.