MR AND MRS SMITH
Directed by Doug Liman
Certificate 15

THIS blazing adventure/romance has finally reached our screens, after months of hearing how it possibly broke up the marriage of Mr and Mrs Brad Pitt.
It seems wherever Angelina Jolie goes, marriages quake in their boots. But that surely is not what we pay our money to see. After all, Jolie herself has claimed she never touched the then-married Pitt.
However, long after this gossip calms down, the film will remain – a slick, violent, shoot ’em up mix between Prizzi’s Honor and True Lies, with a touch of Crouching Tiger and a smidgen or more of an earlier film of the same name.
Pitt and Jolie play beautifully sculpted and dressed undercover assassins, married to each other and yet who don’t know what each other does for a living. So dinner is always on the table at 7pm and they have amusing arguments about drapes when actually Pitt’s character John Smith is out killing people at a poker game while Mrs Jane Smith is pretending to be a dominatrix and snuffing out gun runners in their hotel rooms.
Marvellous in its ability to incite eye-popping crash sequences and ruthlessly designed shoot-outs, this romantic thriller is perfectly slickly made by director Doug Liman who made The Bourne Supremacy. If a filmmaker ever wanted all the toys to make a movie, Liman has had his wish.
This is a film with all the bells and whistles. Top of the line stars – luminous in every shot – who have created big headlines of their own.
Then there are the big, bigger, biggest guns, furious car crashes – and, because one BMW isn’t enough, we get three identically marked BMWs.
This is much more – and much less – than the clever, interesting set- piece at the start. We see our duo at the marriage guidance counsellor and that brief and stand alone piece whets the appetite for something more than what this film delivers.
There is chemistry between Pitt and Jolie but amongst all the broken glass and set design, it is a little hard to see it.