Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005 film)

Mr. & Mrs. Smith
File:Mr and mrs smith poster.jpg Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Doug Liman
Produced by	Akiva Goldsman Arnon Milchan Lucas Foster
Written by	Simon Kinberg
Starring	Brad Pitt Angelina Jolie Vince Vaughn Kerry Washington Adam Brody
Music by	John Powell
Cinematography	Bojan Bazelli
Edited by	Michael Tronick
Production company	Regency Enterprises New Regency Weed Road Pictures
Distributed by	20th Century Fox (United States) Summit Entertainment (International)
Release dates	June 7, 2005 (2005-06-07) (premiere) June 10, 2005 (2005-06-10) (United States)
Running time	120 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$110 million
Box office	$478.3 million

Mr. & Mrs. Smith is a 2005 American romantic comedy action film directed by Doug Liman and written by Simon Kinberg. The original music score was composed by John Powell. The film stars Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as a bored upper-middle class married couple surprised to learn that they are both assassins hired by competing agencies to kill each other.

Besides being a box office hit, it is also notable for establishing Jolie and Pitt's relationship.

Plot

The film opens with construction executive John (Brad Pitt) and tech support representative 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 assassins working for different firms, both among the best in their field, each concealing their true professions from one another. Jane owns I-Temp Technology Staffing, while John owns Smith Engineering, Inc. The couple live in a large, remodelled Colonial Revival house in the suburbs and, to keep up appearances, they socialise with their other wealthy neighbors at respectable parties.

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. After their respective companies find out what happened, each is assigned to eliminate the other.

After making escalating attempts on each other's lives, their conflict culminates in a massive shootout that nearly destroys their house. After 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 sex.

The newly rekindled Smith partnership is quickly threatened by their employers, who have now joined 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 house, the Smiths steal their neighbor's minivan and successfully destroy their attackers' three pursuing armored BMW 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 in order to give their employers something they want more than the Smiths. 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 forget their separate contingency plans and make their 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 armed personnel during a long shoot-out inside a department 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 another country and had a child who inherited their assassin skills.

Cast

• Brad Pitt as John Smith
• Angelina Jolie as Jane Smith
• Vince Vaughn as Eddie
• Adam Brody as Benjamin "The Tank" Danz
• Kerry Washington as Jasmine
• Keith David as Father
• Chris Weitz as Martin Coleman
• Rachael Huntley as Suzy Coleman
• Michelle Monaghan as Gwen
• Stephanie March as Julie
• Jennifer Morrison as Jade
• William Fichtner as Dr. Wexler, the marriage counselor (uncredited)
• Angela Bassett as Mr. Smith's Boss (voice) (uncredited)

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.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith: Original Motion Picture Score
File:Mr. & Mrs. Smith original score album cover.jpg Mr. & Mrs. Smith original score album cover art
Film score by John Powell
Released	June 28, 2005
Genre	Film score
Length	43:54
Label	Lakeshore Records

Score track listing

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"

Mr. & Mrs. Smith Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
File:Mr. & Mrs. Smith original soundtrack album cover.jpg Mr. & Mrs. Smith original soundtrack cover art
Soundtrack album by Various Artists
Released	June 7, 2005
Genre	Film soundtrack Pop/Rock
Length	1:05:40
Label	Lakeshore Records

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic

Soundtrack track listing

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

Release

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 gives the film a score of 59% based on 203 reviews, with an average score of 6.1/10, with the critical consensus "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 the website 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 it ranks as "mixed or average reviews". Simon Braund in 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 at 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 in the San Francisco Chronicle described the film as "awful" and went on to state: "The tiny smidgen of cleverness on display here is contained entirely in the premise. The follow-through is nonexistent".

Home media

A single-disk 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-disk 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-disk DVD release but does not include the additional material from the 2006 two-disk unrated version.

Adaptations and sequel

In 2007, a pilot for a spin-off television series was made for the 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 TV 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.

External links

• Mr. & Mrs. Smith at IMDb
• Mr. & Mrs. Smith at the TCM Movie Database
• Mr. & Mrs. Smith at AllMovie
• Mr. & Mrs. Smith at Rotten Tomatoes
• Mr. & Mrs. Smith at Metacritic
• Mr. & Mrs. Smith at Box Office Mojo
• Mr. & Mrs. Smith at The Numbers