Mr and Mrs Smith (2005 film)

Plot

The film opens with construction executive John (Brad Pitt) and tech support consultant Jane Smith (Angelina Jolie) answering questions during marriage counselling. The couple has been married for "five or six" years, but their marriage is suffering to the point that they cannot remember the last time they had sex. They tell the story of their first meeting in Bogotá, Colombia, where they were both secretly on the run from the Colombian authorities - since the authorities were looking for tourists travelling alone after a recent heist, the two claimed to be together to avoid being questioned. They quickly fell in love and married. John later states that Jane "looked like Christmas morning" to him on the day they met.

In reality, John and Jane are both skilled contract killers working for different firms, both among the best in their field, each concealing their true professions from one another. The couple live in a large Colonial Revival house in the suburbs and, to keep up appearances, socialise with their "conventionally" wealthy (and disliked by each Smith) neighbors.

Under these cover stories, John and Jane balance their apparently mundane marriage – which both of them find after a few years to be growing dull and suffocating – with their secretive work. When both are assigned to kill DIA prisoner Benjamin "The Tank" Danz (Adam Brody) during a transfer, they encounter each other on the job and the hit ends up botched: Danz survives, while John and Jane are assigned to kill each other instead.

After making escalating attempts on each other's lives, the Smiths' conflict culminates in a massive shootout that nearly demolishes their home. In a protracted, evenly matched fight, they wind up with guns in each other's faces. John declines to shoot, his feelings for Jane rekindled, and lays his gun down. Jane finds she cannot shoot John either, and the two have passionate sex.

The renewed Smith partnership is quickly threatened by their employers, who join forces to eliminate the couple. John's best friend and coworker, Eddie (Vince Vaughn), turns down a bounty of $400,000 for each Smith (since he won't get out of bed for anything less than $500,000), but John and Jane find themselves under fire from an army of assassins. Fending off an attack which blows up their pockmarked house, the Smiths steal their neighbor's minivan and successfully destroy their attackers' three pursuing armored sedans, all while bickering over their fighting styles and newly discovered personal secrets.

After meeting with Eddie, the Smiths decide to fight together to preserve their marriage. They kidnap Danz from his high-security prison to use him as a bargaining chip. Danz reveals that he was merely bait, hired jointly by their employers after it was discovered that the Smiths were married, in the hopes of having one Smith kill the other. John and Jane forgo their separate contingency plans and make their last stand together. In the final fight scene of the film, the Smiths – now working smoothly together as a team – defeat an extended attack by a large force of heavily armed operatives during a long shootout inside a home decorating store.

The film ends with the couple meeting the marriage counselor (William Fichtner) again, where the Smiths state how much their marriage has thrived, with John encouraging him to ask for an update on their sex lives (to which he silently answers "10").

An alternate ending shows that they chose to move to Italy and had a child who inherited their assassin skills.

Cast

Background

Screenwriter Simon Kinberg came up with the idea for the film after listening to a couple of his friends who were in therapy for their marriage. Kinberg noticed that the way they were describing it sounded "aggressive and mercenary" and he "thought it would make an interesting template for a relationship inside of an action film."

Music

Three soundtrack albums were released from the film: a film score composed by John Powell, a U.S. soundtrack with songs used in the film and an International Soundtrack with the song by Pink Martini replaced with KansasCali. The albums were released at different times to avoid confusion; the former was released on June 28, 2005, and the latter on June 7, 2005.

1. "Bogota"
2. "The Bedroom"
3. "Playing House"
4. "Assignments"
5. "His and Her Hits"
6. "Office Work"
7. "Desert Foxes"
8. "John and Jane's Identity"
9. "Dinner"
10. "Hood Jump"
11. "Mutual Thoughts"
12. "John Drops In"
13. "Tango de Los Asesinos"
14. "Two Phone Calls"
15. "Kiss and Make Up"
16. "Minivan Chase"
17. "Shopping Spree"
18. "Dodging Bullets"
19. "The Next Adventure"
20. "Jesus of Surburbia"

1. "Love Stinks" – The J. Geils Band
2. "Nothin' but a Good Time" – Poison
3. "Tainted Love" – Soft Cell
4. "Baby, Baby" – Alana D.
5. "Express Yourself" (Mocean Worker Remix) – Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band
6. "Mondo Bongo" – Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros
7. "Lay Lady Lay" – Magnet featuring Gemma Hayes
8. "I Melt with You" – Nouvelle Vague
9. "Nobody Does It Better" – 8mm
10. "Let's Never Stop Falling in Love" – Pink Martini
11. "Tango De Los Asesinos (Assassin's Tango)" – John Powell
12. "Used to Love Her (But I Had To Kill Her)" – Voodoo Glow Skulls
13. "You Are My Sunshine" – Stine J.
14. "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" – The Righteous Brothers
15. "Making Love Out of Nothing at All" – Air Supply
16. "You Give Love a Bad Name" – Atreyu
17. "Love Will Keep Us Together" – Captain & Tennille

Box office

Mr. & Mrs. Smith opened on June 10, 2005 in the United States and Canada in 3,424 theaters. The film ranked at the top in its opening weekend, accumulating $50,342,878. Mr. & Mrs. Smith went on to gross $186,336,279 in North America and had a worldwide total of $478,207,520. It was the highest-grossing film for both superstars Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, but was later surpassed by World War Z for Pitt and Maleficent for Jolie.

Reception

Mr. & Mrs. Smith received mixed to positive reviews from critics. Review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a score of 59% based on 208 reviews, with an average score of 6/10. The critical consensus reads "Although this action-romance suffers from weak writing and one too many explosions, the chemistry generated by onscreen couple Pitt and Jolie is palpable enough to make this a thoroughly enjoyable summer action flick." At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received a rating average of 55 based on 41 reviews, which indicated "mixed or average reviews". Simon Braund of Empire gave the film a positive review, describing it as "a full-on action flick, subversive rom-com and weapons-grade star vehicle that's drenched in Tinseltown glitz, from a director who knows how to put the money on the screen while his tongue's firmly in his cheek". Daniel Saney of Digital Spy gave the film four stars out of five, saying "Its ideas are often borrowed, and it's hardly deep and meaningful, but it's a fantastically fun film". Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times praised the chemistry between the lead actors, saying "What makes the movie work is that Pitt and Jolie have fun together on the screen and they're able to find a rhythm that allows them to be understated and amused even during the most alarming developments". In a negative review, Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle described the film as "awful" and stated that "The tiny smidgen of cleverness on display here is contained entirely in the premise. The follow-through is nonexistent".

Home media

A single-disc DVD of the film was released on November 29, 2005, and a two-disc unrated version of the film was released on DVD on June 6, 2006. During director Doug Liman's audio commentary on the single-disc DVD release, he mentions that he was not able to use as much sex and violence as they had originally filmed, in order to obtain a PG-13 rating for the film. The film was released on Blu-ray on December 4, 2007. It includes the extra material from the 2005 single-disc DVD release but does not include the additional material from the 2006 two-disc unrated version.

Inaccurate depiction of Bogotá

The film was criticized by the government of Colombia especially for showing the capital Bogotá as a small village in the middle of the jungle with a hot and humid climate. The Mayor of the time Luis Eduardo Garzón and the president Alvaro Uribe Vélez invited Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and the producers of the same to know the city and realize their mistake in showing that "Bogotá" as the city is known for being a great metropolis of cold weather. In 2012 this led to the government of Colombia to proclaim a law named "Ley 1556 de 2012", requiring the state to return a portion of the production costs for movies set in the country; and thus show the reality of different places of the country.

Adaptations and sequel

In 2007, a pilot for a spin-off television series was made for the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) network. Set six months after the end of the film, it was written by Simon Kinberg and directed by Doug Liman. Kinberg described the proposed television series as "Married... with Children with guns." The roles of John and Jane were played by Martin Henderson and Jordana Brewster. On website The Futon Critic, Brian Ford Sullivan criticised the chemistry between Henderson and Brewster and ended his review stating: "While there's always a few gems that get locked away in the networks' vaults each year, this decidedly isn't one of them". ABC decided not to commission the series.

In June 2010, Jolie stated that she and Pitt had inquired about a sequel to the film but were dissatisfied with the story. Jolie stated: "We did ask somebody to look into Mr. & Mrs. to see if they could crack a sequel, but there wasn't anything original. It was just, 'Well, they're going to get married, or they've got kids, or they get separated.' Never great."

In February 2010, it was reported that Regency Enterprises was developing a prequel to the film which would be titled Mr. and Mrs. Jones, and would not feature either Pitt or Jolie. The story would follow a pair of spies who pose as a married couple when they graduate agency training. Akiva Goldsman was attached to produce.

In July 2011, it was announced that Hong Kong studio New Asia Entertainment Group was to produce a remake entitled Assassin Couple. The film was to star Donnie Yen and Cecilia Cheung in the lead roles, and the studio stated that while the film would share some similarities with Mr. & Mrs. Smith, it would feature a new storyline. The budget for the film was set at $18.7 million.