Mr. & Mrs. Smith
dir. Doug Liman
Opens Fri June 10.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith opens in therapy. Specifically, in the frosty offices of a marriage counselor, where John and Jane Smith (Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie) have sought a little help for their marriage. They have issues: He's a professional killer, she's a professional killer, but both have seen fit to keep their jobs secret from the other. As a result, their relationship has suffered, and whatever passion they began with vanished during their double lives. Their terribly exciting and terribly dangerous jobs are covered up by their terribly bland marriage, and if something doesn't happen soon, the entire house of cards will come crashing down.

As it happens, fate provides a something: Both John and Jane are hired for the same job, unbeknownst to them, and during the sort of ludicrously complicated assassination attempt only a hyperactive screenwriter can conjure up, husband and wife are forced to turn their laser sights on each other. She shoots him in the Kevlar, he launches a rocket her way, and their marriage, once so lackluster, receives a much-needed boost in firepower. Spousal abuse, as it turns out, is their Spanish fly.

Such, anyway, is the film's premise, and though it may have looked good on paper (and even better 20 years ago when it was called Prizzi's Honor), the final product proves to be a piece of irredeemable trash. Maybe this shouldn't be a surprise; given the flood of tabloid headlines the film has already produced (not since Cleopatra has off-screen canoodling between stars inspired so much check-out line blather), the film itself was no doubt destined for failure. But what is surprising is the fact that Doug Liman, whose last film was the fantastic Bourne Identity, is the man responsible. Where Bourne remained determined and tightly wound, however, Mr. & Mrs. Smith frays alarmingly, and as I watched it evaporate before my eyes I began to suspect that Liman-also responsible for the perplexingly popular Swingers and Go-is a one-trick pony. Every director fails sometimes, but few crash as loudly as Liman has this time around. Half-baked and utterly pointless, Mr. & Mrs. Smith is not just a blunder-I found it to be an actual insult: 130 minutes of pretty things to look at, but nothing else.

Which is too bad, really, since both Pitt and Jolie are obviously game. Say what you want about their off-screen romance (pausing to note that you can almost always assume that a story this big has been generated by publicists hoping to distract attention from a film this bad), both stars showed up to play, and it's a shame they weren't given more to work with. There's a definite chemistry between Pitt and Jolie, a chemistry that goes beyond their obvious attributes, but all Mr. & Mrs. Smith can do is squander it. The script offers the sort of film-school lameness that rarely makes it out of class. And no wonder: According the film's press notes, screenwriter Simon Kinberg wrote the first draft of Mr. & Mrs. Smith as his thesis at Columbia University Film School. Presumably there was a second draft somewhere along the way-if not a 50th-but it's hard to tell, as the film lacks normally necessary elements like recognizable villains, or even a climax. Who are John and Jane's respective employers? We never really know for sure; he works for what looks like a ramshackle operation, she a sleek and tech-heavy one, but we never see the faces of those pulling the strings. You expect the curtain to be drawn back, but evidently there's no wizard in sight.

Consequently, all Mr. & Mrs. Smith does is build to a fiery conclusion it never even attempts to earn, with both Pitt and Jolie reduced to mere prop status along the way. Liman still knows how to shoot action-his loose, even careless style brought a surprising realism to Bourne Identity, and here it adds a sense of playfulness to all the gunplay-but this time action is all he has to work with. Pretty people making pretty explosions does not a good movie make. Just ask Michael Bay. â–