Stuff for Dads

  Mr & Mrs Smith (DVD)

Starring: Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie.

Rated: 15.

Story: Two professional assassins get married to each other without letting on about their careers. (Chortle.) After much lying (Ho, ho!), they both find out the truth. (Uh-oh.) They try and kill each other. (Oh no!) Then they try to kill everybody else. (Screech, slice, thakka-thakka-thakka, argh, BOOM!)

Comments: You can see why this got made - Brad & Angelina, plenty of action and a strong central gag. After all, there has to be plenty of comedy in a marriage where both partners are secretly hitmen, especially with a team of crack Hollywood scriptwriters working eagerly to tease it out...

Oh, apparently not.

The film only really gets going when the secret is revealed. It's then that the verbal sniping and the, er, actual sniping take off. Before that, there's just some sneaking about, lots of lying and a few limp jokes involving guns hidden in odd places. After the halfway point, however, sitcom starts to be usurped by action until the whole thing is enveloped in a hail of bullets of Shoot 'Em Up proportions. It's like some kind of ultimate date movie compromise - romantic comedy and Brad for her; guns and Angelina for him.

The action sequences are entertaining enough but they're slightly undone by the seeming invulnerability of the main characters. This is exacerbated by an unwise homage to the last scene of Butch Cassidy which misses the point. Even the massive final gunfight is slightly messed up by the deletion of a long segment that leaves a glaring continuity error. Ho hum.

Pitt and Jolie turn in their usual performances but to less effect than normal, since their characters aren't very sympathetic - they spend much of the movie being mean to each other and, whichever way you look at it, they're hitmen. Hitmen just aren't nice people.

Someone should probably have thought of that before giving this the go ahead.

Conclusion: Start watching it halfway through.

Explosions: Occasional.
Body count: Astronomical.
Angelina's legs: Long.
Brad Pitt: Slightly irritating.
Jokes: One (stretched to within an inch of its life and then given a good flogging to push it that last two and a half centimetres).

Rating: 3/5 if you're a fan of Brad and Angelina (else 2/5).

Labels: action, comedy, film review

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