Mr. & Mrs. Smith was released in the United States on June 10, 2005 and received mixed reviews from critics, who praised Pitt and Jolie's performances and chemistry but criticized the screenplay. Neverthless, the film was a commercial success, grossing $487.3 million worldwide and becoming the seventh highest-grossing film of 2005. In 2024, a television series of the same name loosely inspired by the film premiered on Amazon Prime Video, starring Donald Glover and Maya Erskine as two strangers paired up as spies and posing as a married couple; producer Arnon Milchan is the only cast or crew member returning from the original film.
Plot
John Smith, a construction executive, and his wife Jane, a tech support consultant, are at marriage counseling. They have been married for five or six years, and their marriage is suffering from a lack of communication and acts of quiet aggression, such as Jane installing drapes that John said he disliked. They first met in Bogotá, Colombia, claiming to be together to avoid being questioned by Colombian authorities. The two had a whirlwind courtship and married.
In secret, John and Jane are skilled field operatives working for separate contract-killing firms and are both among the best in their field. They are adept at concealing their true profession from each other. The Smiths live in a large Colonial Revival house in the New York City suburbs, keeping up appearances by reluctantly socializing with their "conventionally" wealthy neighbors. Underneath their cover stories, John and Jane balance their marriage (which is apparently mundane, dull and suffocating) with their careers.
After they are both assigned to kill DIA prisoner Benjamin "The Tank" Danz in a prison transfer, they run into each other on the job and the hit is botched. Knowing that their spouse is a fellow assassin makes both John and Jane fear that their marriage was just a part of the cover story and that their spouse will try to kill them in order to prevent their secret from being exposed. Following a tense dinner, Jane sneaks off and drives away from their home. John pursues her in hopes of talking things out, but slips against a fence, causing him to accidentally fire a gunshot that nearly hits Jane, thus solidifying her fears. Jane works with her team and steals John's armoury from their home. Jane tries to kill John but he escapes every time. After several escalating attempts on each other's lives, the Smiths' conflict ends in a massive shootout which nearly demolishes their house. During a protracted and evenly-matched fight, John and Jane pull guns aiming at each other. John finally realizes he cannot kill Jane, even if it means she will kill him instead, and lays his gun down. Jane discovers that she cannot shoot John either, and they spend a passionate night together.
The renewed Smith partnership is threatened by their employers, who join forces to eliminate the couple. Eddie, John's best friend and co-worker, turns down a bounty of $400,000 for each of them. The Smiths are attacked by an army of assassins. Their pockmarked house is blown up and the Smiths steal their neighbor's minivan. They destroy their attackers' pursuing armored sedans, while bickering about their fighting styles and personal secrets they have discovered about each other. They meet with Eddie and decide to save their marriage. The Smiths kidnap Danz from his high-security prison to use as a bargaining chip.
Danz tells them that he is merely bait, an intern hired by each of their employers after they discovered the Smiths were married; his clients hoped the Smiths would kill each other. Discarding each of their contingency plans, the Smiths make a last stand together, fending off an assault inside a home decorating store by heavily armed operatives. In the aftermath, the Smiths meet their marriage counselor again and say that their marriage is thriving.
William Fichtner as Dr. Wexler, the marriage counselor (uncredited)
Angela Bassett as the voice of Mr. Smith's boss, Atlanta (uncredited)
Production
Background and development
In July 2000, it was announced Summit Entertainment had purchased screenwriter Simon Kinberg's spec script Mr. and Mrs. Smith with Weed Road Pictures slated to produce.[4] Kinberg had written and sold the screenplay while working as a grad student for Columbia University's film program.[4]
Kinberg had the idea for the screenplay after listening to a couple of his friends who went to marriage therapy. He thought it "sounded kind of aggressive and mercenary. And I just thought it would make an interesting template for a relationship inside of an action film."[5] He named True Lies and The Thin Man series as among the inspirations.[6] Though he initially pitched the script as a blend of many popular film genres, he ultimately saw it as primarily a romantic comedy. The director, Doug Liman, and the producers shared this vision, and attempted to present the action film elements as background and the relationship struggles between the two leads as the foreground.[6][7] Kinberg phrased the romantic drama in metaphorical terms by making the characters "mythical" action film archetypes whose marital spats play out on a grandiose scale, and acknowledged that the tone was difficult for a film to pull off, since if taken literally, some of the characters' actions (such as John slamming Jane into a mirror during the restaurant scene) would constitute spousal abuse.[6]
Casting
Producers secured Brad Pitt and Nicole Kidman for the leads when Doug Liman received the script. However, Kidman dropped out due to scheduling conflicts with The Stepford Wives, leaving the film without a co-lead.[8] This led to Pitt dropping from the film.[9]
John Leguizamo was offered the role of Eddie, but he turned it down as he was going to get paid on scale, a decision he later regretted.[17]Parker Posey auditioned for the role of Jasmine, which eventually went to Kerry Washington.[18]
Filming
The scenes in the marriage counselor's office were all shot on the first day of filming, which the filmmakers thought worked exceptionally well because the usual awkwardness of the first day of filming, in conjunction with Pitt and Jolie's awkwardness at working together for the first time, came across as authentic discomfort between their characters.[6][7]
The producers wanted to have the Bogotá scenes filmed in Guanajuato, Mexico, but due to budget limitations they decided to settle for shooting it in downtown Los Angeles.[7]
The dinner scene in which John and Jane Smith see each other with the knowledge that they are both assassins for the first time was described by both Kinberg and Liman as the scene which best encapsulated what they were trying to accomplish with the film. The scene was shot with John spitting out the meat into a napkin, but afterwards Liman was suddenly inspired to reshoot with John swallowing the meat, a decision Kinberg agreed with.[6] In the subsequent chase scene, John was scripted to run into the picket fence, which was rigged to break on impact, but during the take that was ultimately used Pitt accidentally slipped and fell onto the fence instead.[6]
John Smith's escape from the elevator was described as on-screen in the script, and was extensively worked out, but ultimately not filmed due to budget limitations.[6]
The script called for Jane Smith to seduce Benjamin "The Tank" Danz in order to get the information the Smiths wanted, causing a bitter argument between John and Jane, but Jolie objected to doing this scene, perceiving it as a female spy stereotype. Liman said he thought Kinberg's script for the scene was terrific, but ultimately agreed to having it rewritten so Jane would bludgeon Danz instead in order to appease Jolie's concerns.[6]
Liman decided to take a lesson from how most of the scenes he shot with the villains of The Bourne Identity ended up being cut from the film, and keep the villain screentime to a minimum with Mr. & Mrs. Smith.[6] However, roughly two-thirds of the way through filming the producers reviewed the footage and concluded that there was no need for the film to have villains at all, since they only distracted from the central romantic conflict between the Smiths, and cut all the scenes in which the villains appeared.[6][7] Liman also felt that having villains who the Smiths defeat sent the wrong message, implying that the Smiths' problems are completely resolved, and preferred the film to end with the message that marriage is an ongoing struggle.[6][11]
Music
Two soundtrack albums were released from the film: a soundtrack album by various artists and a film score composed by John Powell. The albums were released at different times to avoid confusion; the soundtrack was released on June 7, 2005, and the score on June 28, 2005.[19][20]
Mr. & Mrs. Smith: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Mr. & Mrs. Smith Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
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.[1]
Critical response
Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gave Mr. & Mrs. Smith an approval rating of 60% based on 212 reviews, with an average score of 6.10/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "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."[22] At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received a rating average of 55 out of 100, based on 41 critics, which indicated "mixed or average reviews".[23] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.[24]
Simon Braund of 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".[25] Daniel Saney of Digital Spy gave 4/5 stars, saying "Its ideas are often borrowed, and it's hardly deep and meaningful, but it's a fantastically fun film".[26]Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave 3/4 stars and 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".[27] In a negative review, Mick LaSalle of San Francisco Chronicle described the film as "awful" and stated that "The tiny smidgen of cleverness on display here is contained entirely in the premise. The follow-through is nonexistent".[28]
In 2006, New Zealand author Gavin Bishop accused the makers of the movie of plagiarizing his 1997 school book, "The Secret Lives of Mr. and Mrs. Smith", which features a husband and wife living apparently dull suburban lives, but unbeknownst to each other, both work as spies. Bishop stated that he could not afford to sue, but would be happy to if a law firm would take up his case.[30][31]
Inaccurate depiction of Bogotá
An accurate image of Bogotá in 1999
The government of Colombia criticized the film in particular for showing the capital Bogotá as a small village in the middle of the jungle with a hot and humid climate.[32] President Alvaro Uribe Vélez and Mayor Luis Eduardo Garzón invited Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, and the producers to get to know the city and realize the mistakes they made.[33]
Home media
A single-disc 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 which is on the single-disc DVD release, he says that the film was edited for sexual and violent content to get a PG-13 rating. Mr. & Mrs. Smith was released on Blu-ray on December 4, 2007. It includes extra material from the 2005 single-disc DVD release but does not include additional material from the 2006 two-disc unrated version.
Legacy
In 2007, a pilot for a spin-off television series was made for the network ABC. Set six months after the end of the film, it was written by Simon Kinberg and directed by Doug Liman. Kinberg described the proposed television series as "Married... with Children with guns."[34] The roles of John and Jane were played by Martin Henderson and Jordana Brewster. On website The Futon Critic, Brian Ford Sullivan criticized 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".[35] ABC decided not to commission the series.[36]
In June 2010, Jolie said that she and Pitt had inquired about a sequel to the film but were dissatisfied with the story. Jolie remarked, "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."[38]
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