The release of the new movie Mr. & Mrs. Smith provides a kind of
quaint lesson in the long, often dishonorable history of motion picture
publicity. To draw its audience the flacks have naturally employed the
time-honored methods of advertising: print ads, television commercials, movie
trailers. But they’ve also resorted to some other charmingly ancient gimmicks,
namely the broad exploitation of a putative romance between the principals,
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.
The movie magazines, the
entertainment weeklies, the television news channels, the gossip pages, and of
course the supermarket tabloids now discuss the relationship with the
intellectual concentration of a PBS discussion of foreign policy.
All that ink, electronic disturbance,
and hot air not only create interest in potential moviegoers, but also
transform the alleged reviewers into entertainment reporters and gossip
mongers, not necessarily a step down for many in the profession. The movie
itself then becomes less important than the chatter about the two stars, which
in turn inspires the reviewers to discuss with the seriousness of academic
instructors such weighty scientific matters as biology, electricity, and
chemistry.
Despite all the hype about personal
subjects, in reality Mr. & Mrs. Smith demonstrates that no matter how strange, strained, or possibly even serious the
fictional situation, Hollywood can turn it into slick comic entertainment. The
film’s central concept, which everyone by now must know, involves an entirely
ridiculous premise — the husband and wife in a tranquil, even stodgy suburban
marriage, unbeknownst to each other, are both professional assassins working
for two separate agencies.
Their secrets ultimately unravel, as
surely everyone knows they will, when each receives the assignment to kill the
other, which not only ignites a series of impossibly violent battles between
them, but also establishes them as targets for their erstwhile employers. Once
the couple realizes the truth about each other and themselves, they discover
they must fight against a heavily armed common enemy, in fact an army of
killers who besiege their home, chase them down the highways of suburban New
York, and engage them in a climactic shootout in a department store.
Although it takes its title from a
rather tepid Hitchcock comedy, the movie draws its real inspiration from two
films of the 1980s, The War of the Roses and Prizzi’s Honor. It combines the
hostility of the failed marriage in the first title with the concept of married
assassins assigned to kill each other in the darker second flick, suggesting
that beneath the surface of violent action and occasional comedy, Mr. & Mrs. Smith actually serves as
a kind of commentary on the perils and difficulties of contemporary bourgeois
marriage. To underline that subtext, the movie in fact bookends its action with
the couple speaking directly to the camera, the point of view of a marriage counselor,
about the problems and issues in their relationship.
The impossibly violent action of the
film supplies a number of opportunities for the couple to parody the shocking
moments of revelation between two people who lead separate, secret lives. When
they return from their mutually botched assignments to kill each other, both
partners mention that they missed each other, which quite literally is the
case.
As they speed down the highway
exchanging shots with three pursuing automobiles, they confess to all they lies
they have lived by, including the astonishing number of people they have killed
(she beats him easily, 312 to 50 or 60), their respective false backgrounds,
the truth about the business trips and professional obligations each has
invented.
Aside from the obvious appeal of two
extremely handsome and sexually magnetic performers enjoying each other on
screen — Angelina Jolie looks great in vinyl, by the way, with a real talent
for the dominatrix style — the movie accomplishes the remarkable task of
making professional assassins, people who murder other people in cold blood for
money, entirely likable and attractive. The combination of lively action, some
occasionally witty writing, and above all, the appeal and charm of the two
stars once again demonstrates the brilliance of Hollywood at its commercial
best — to make a story about murderers a funny, pleasant, and lighthearted
romantic comedy requires a weird kind of genius.
Like it or not, and despite all the
heavy hype, Mr. and Mrs. Smith clearly succeeds at all it sets out to do, not excluding making an enormous
amount of money.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith(PG-13), is playing at Cinemark Tinseltown,
Loews Webster, Pittsford Plaza Cinema, Regal Culver Ridge, Regal Eastview,
Regal Henrietta.
This article appears in Jun 15-21, 2005.
