Who said marriage was boring?! (Mr. & Mrs. Smith (DVD))

Member Name: linzeelou

Product:	Mr. & Mrs. Smith (DVD)
Date:	02/08/09 (51 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great plot and acting

Disadvantages: A bit too silly at times

Mr and Mrs Smith is a romantic action/ comedy film released in 2005. The film is rated 15 because of the amount of violence and sex and is 115 minutes long. Mr and Mrs Smith was a box office hit, making just over $478 million worldwide, over 4 times it's budget of £110 million.

John and Jane Smith have a troubled marriage and at the very start we see them attend couselling and answering the questions asked, although they don't seem to agree on the answers. They can't even agree on how long they have been married for.

Their life at home seems quite mundane and passionless. Each of them come home from work every day and do the exact same thing. Their relationship doesn't exactly seem normal and the couple barely talk to each other but that is the fault of the secrets they're keeping.

John and Jane have both lied to each other about their work, pretending to have normal, boring jobs but really they are both assassins, working for different agencies and having different stratogies. The first mission we see them on (seperately) is one where they are trying to take each other out, unknowingly of course. When they both fail the mission, each of them are informed who their other half really is. Without telling the other about what they know, they go about trying to kill each other in order to keep their jobs.

John and Jane both start off not really giving this new mission their all but it ends up in one huge fight but they both realise neither of them can go through with it, and make up instead, joining forces. Their bosses put out a bounty for each of them as they failed their missions and they must learn to compromise and work together just to stay alive.

Cast
Brad Pitt - John Smith
Angelina Jolie - Jane Smith
Adam Brody - Benjamin "The Tank" Danz
Vince Vaughn - Eddie
Kerry Washington - Jasmine
Keith David - Father
Angela Bassett - Atlanta
Chris Weitz - Martin Coleman

Some of the differences between the rated and unrated version
- In the unrated version, the dance scene is extended and is more sexual
- In the unrated version there is a bigger build up before the big fight between John and Jane
- In the rated version, Eddies see's a bounty for each John and Jane but this was deleted in the unrated version
- In the unrated version, the fight in the store is extended

Brad and Angelina were fantastic as the leads and I think their real life romance really added to the passion behind the roles. I know we didn't know this at first but if this is the kind of film we get from a real couple then I hope more are cast as leads. It was great to see their characters change so much through the film and we see them both as the nice married couple, changing to sly and cunning to get their own way, and then they go into all loved up and a bit slushy. It really made a change for the characters to have such a difference in their personalities at times.

Even though Adam Brody and Vince Vaughan had small roles in Mr and Mrs Smith, I really enjoyed the comedy they brough, on top of Brad and Angelina. I loved Brody in The O.C and I wish he had been given more time on screen.

The visuals of the film are amazing and there are loads of special effects. The fight scenes were choreographed really well and although not really predictable, they were still fun to watch. I studied Media at college and we had a crash course in how to fight on screen and how to make it believable/ not look fake on screen so to watch something as complex as this was amazing. It would have taken a lot of hard work to pull these scenes off.

There is a lot of violence in this film, hence it being rated 15, but I certainly don't think it was a bad thing. Assassins would have been very boring and tame if they didn't blow lots of things up or shoot at a load of people. Although there was a big amount of violence, I don't think it was overdone and the amount fit the film really well. I thought it was really funny that trying to kill each other was shown as a way to bring back the passion in a marriage, obviously this wouldn't happen in real life.

The story is somewhat predictable in parts but I don't think it took away any entertainment value from the film. Normally I hate the predictable parts but these didn't really bother me.

Summary: The start of Brangelina.