Mr and Mrs Smith **** (2005, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Vince Vaughn, Adam Brody) – Classic Movie Review 711

This largely unrelated film with the same title as Alfred Hitchcock’s 1941 screwball comedy was a 2005 blockbuster, in which a husband and wife who are both secret agents, are hired by competing agencies to kill each other. When they discover one another’s secret life, they believe they are not really married and that the marriage was just a plot to spy on the other agent.

The film’s title and the crucial question of the validity of the couple’s marriage are the two elements the films have in common. Was screenwriter Simon Kinberg inspired by seeing the Hitchcock movie? It was his thesis for his Masters in Fine Arts. The script reportedly went through more than 50 drafts. Though Kinberg ended up as the final writer during production, various uncredited others worked on drafts throughout the film’s development, including Jez Butterworth, Carrie Fisher, Akiva Goldsman, Ted Griffin, Kieran Mulroney, Michele Mulroney and Terence Winter.

Two of the coolest people on the planet, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, put blazing star power into director Doug Liman’s wild and wayward action comedy. Amazingly, the high-revving Pitt-Jolie (Brangelina) double act convince as the world’s most deadly assassins with marriage problems – and the biggest of course is that they’ve been hired to kill each other, although it turns out they don’t agree on interior décor either. Indeed, we find them trying to work it all out at the marriage counsellor’s.

The film has flash, bang and wallop – and lots of witty lines spat out with relish – but not much in the way of plausibility, coherence or sense of reality. Yet, with Pitt and Jolie playing fast and loose, it’s a huge fun date movie. With rare screen chemistry, they spark so brilliantly you can’t imagine anyone else getting away with it.

Liman was on safer ground with his previous film, The Bourne Identity (2002), but it’s still an enormously entertaining movie anyway, nicely driven along by the score by John Powell, who also scored Bourne Identity in similar style.

Nicole Kidman was originally cast as Mrs Smith and Pitt reportedly left the project when she dropped out until Jolie signed on. The couple were both paid $20million, a large chunk of the huge $110million budget. A huge smash, it grossed nearly $200million in the US. Pitt had to leave for three months in the middle of the shoot to film Ocean’s Twelve (2004).

Mr and Mrs Smith was sent out to cinemas under the code name ‘Jones’. The original ending featured villains played by Jacqueline Bisset and Terence Stamp. A second ending was filmed with Angela Bassett and Keith David as the villains. This was also dumped.

http://derekwinnert.com/mr-mrs-smith-1941-classic-film-review-572/

http://derekwinnert.com/oceans-12-classic-film-review-697/

(C) Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Film Review 711 derekwinnert.com