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A married couple (Pitt and Jolie) are getting bored with their quiet domestic
life. What they don't know, however, is that they're both assassins, secretly
hopping the world and killing for hire. But their separate lives are about
to collide when each finds out their next target is their own spouse.
Released amidst rumors of romance between costars Angelina Jolie and soon-to-be-divorced
Brad Pitt, Mr. and Mrs. Smith offers automatic weapons and high explosives
as the cure for marital boredom. The premise of this exhausting action-comedy
(no relation to the 1941 Alfred Hitchcock comedy starring Carole Lombard
and Robert Montgomery) is that the unhappily married Smiths (Pitt and
Jolie) will improve their relationship once they discover their mutually-hidden
identities as world-class assassins, but things get complicated when their
secret-agency bosses order them to rub each other out. There's plenty
of amusing banter in the otherwise disposable screenplay by Simon Kinberg
(xXx: State of the Union, Fantastic Four), and director Doug Liman (The
Bourne Identity) gives Pitt and Jolie a slick, glossy superstar showcase
that's innocuous but certainly never boring. It could've been better,
but as an action-packed summer confection, Mr. and Mrs. Smith kills two
hours in high style. --Jeff Shannon
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