Genre

John and Jane Smith are a seemingly happy couple. They live a pretty normal but almost mundane existence of shared meals, kissed farewells and chats about the color of their curtains. They even go to therapy together, purportedly to iron out their differences. It turns out, however, that they have a lot more in common than they both realize. You see, they both have secret lives—they are both assassins. We're not talking some street-punks you might hire in a bar, or leather coat wearing mafia hit-men, they are the bes... at their game. Armed to the teeth with the latest military equipment, they swoop into high risk situations, execute their targets with professionalism and glide out using gadgets that would make Bond jealous. Of course they don't know what each other truly do for a living, lying and pretending on a daily basis and always staying one step ahead of being caught until one day they meet on an operation and suddenly—understandably—everything changes. Cue lots of matrimonial gunplay, fisticuffs and general banter as the fight their way to a stalemate before deciding what they are going to do from then on. Needless to say the respective agencies that employ them are none too happy about the situation that they are in and require each one to kill the other. Will they be able to survive and—more importantly—save their marriage?

Mr. and Mrs. Smith is a romantic comedy action vehicle which weighs heavily on the final element to keep audiences gripped. Many of movies over the years have adopted a similarly strange mix to lighten an otherwise potentially serious subject and make the proceedings more appealing for a wider audience, but with debatable results. The trouble is, if you go for a Last Action Hero-style near-spoof, you risk losing all sense of dramatic tension and potentially all interest that the audiences might have in the film.

John and Jane Smith are a seemingly happy couple. They live a pretty normal but almost mundane existence of shared meals, kissed farewells and chats about the color of their curtains. They even go to therapy together, purportedly to iron out their differences. It turns out, however, that they have a lot more in common than they both realize. You see, they both have secret lives—they are both assassins. We're not talking some street-punks you might hire in a bar, or leather coat wearing mafia hit-men, they are the bes... at their game. Armed to the teeth with the latest military equipment, they swoop into high risk situations, execute their targets with professionalism and glide out using gadgets that would make Bond jealous. Of course they don't know what each other truly do for a living, lying and pretending on a daily basis and always staying one step ahead of being caught until one day they meet on an operation and suddenly—understandably—everything changes. Cue lots of matrimonial gunplay, fisticuffs and general banter as the fight their way to a stalemate before deciding what they are going to do from then on. Needless to say the respective agencies that employ them are none too happy about the situation that they are in and require each one to kill the other. Will they be able to survive and—more importantly—save their marriage?

Mr. and Mrs. Smith is a romantic comedy action vehicle which weighs heavily on the final element to keep audiences gripped. Many of movies over the years have adopted a similarly strange mix to lighten an otherwise potentially serious subject and make the proceedings more appealing for a wider audience, but with debatable results. The trouble is, if you go for a Last Action Hero-style near-spoof, you risk losing all sense of dramatic tension and potentially all interest that the audiences might have in the film.