Release Date: June 10, 2005

(out of 4)

Amidst all the speculation that this film led to the ultimate demise of one of Hollywood’s most beautiful couples (we are, of course, talking about Brad and Jennifer – NOT Tom and Katie), “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” does rise above the paparazzi garbage and manages to be a sharp, witty and entertaining movie for the summer movie season. It’s not a classic by any means; a high-concept premise with such star caliber demands nothing less of perfection and there are a few points that “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” is sorely lacking in.

But Simon Kinberg’s screenplay takes a creative and thoughtful look about a problem that has plagued husbands and wives ever since the Stone Age: careers and the effect they have on marriages. In the case of “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” we have a seemingly normal couple living in a wealthy suburb of New York City. They have become more and more distant due to the growing demands of their jobs. Only instead of a case of one being a Wall St. banker and the other being a lawyer, they’re in truth secret assassins for competing agencies. And after five (or six, as you will see in the movie) years of marriage, this secret has ultimately led to the decline of their marriage.

The movie opens with Brad and Angelina, or John and Jane Smith rather, sitting opposite the camera in what appears to be a marriage counseling session. We learn that the two met on a paradise island where they were both on secret missions. The loving, the sex, the chemistry, and the excitement was all there but something during the course of the marriage has degraded their interactions to standard, dinner-time banter.

Outside of the home, their day jobs are anything but banal. Jane works for an all-girl assassin group that is tasked with killing a computer hacker named Benjamin (The O.C.’s Adam Brody). John, who along with his paranoid partner Eddie (Vince Vaughn), is also sent to the desert for a high-profile mission: assassinating a hacker named Benjamin. John and Jane have their own covert operations for the kill, but before they go for the attack, they realize pretty quickly that there is an enemy team somewhere in the distance. John sees Jane in the distance, and vice-versa, but neither can decipher who the other person is exactly. Their missions are sabotaged as they each make an attempt on the other’s life, but Benjamin escapes and the world’s top two assassins have failed at their missions.

As a result, a bounty has been placed on both of their heads. John can’t believe Jane is out to get him and likewise, Jane has trouble believing John’s in the same profession. During their first dinner since the assassination attempt, they test each other’s skills and reflexes in the form of throwing knives and dropping bottles. When the truth becomes more and more apparent, it’s an all out war of the spies as Mr. and Mrs. Smith is no longer the couple we thought they were.

The action and chemistry between Brad and Angelina mold perfectly for the film. Whether you choose to believe that their real life has anything to do with this film, you can’t deny that their characters at the very least do appear to be very much in love together, despite their internal conflicts with their allegiance to their agencies. The movie is a mixture of “The War of the Roses” and “True Lies” but with a more grand sense of hurt, betrayal, redemption, and forgiveness. One wouldn’t mind killing the other after five years of being lied to. Yet as John and Jane are having honest conversations while pointing guns and bazookas at each other, they open themselves emotionally for the first time in their married life.

Director Doug Liman (“Swingers,” “The Bourne Identity”) does a great job of blending foreplay and action together, as many of their scenes in which they’re out to slit each other throats are really, in fact, the most intimate moments they’ve ever had together as a couple. For example, Jane finds herself sitting in a high-class restaurant where he proposed to her. John shows up and the two engage in a sexy tango dance, all while disarming the other of any weaponry. After all of the deceptions and truths from their pasts surface, the wall that originally separated Mr. and Mrs. Smith is finally broken. John and Jane Smith have the same arguments and quips that most couples face nowadays anyway. You know that age old question you try not to ask your partner, the “how many before you met me?” question? Well, Jane has had more than John before she met him. Kills, that is.