I won’t pretend that the plot of Mr and Mrs Smith is its most important element. The film’s entertainment comes from the thrill of star power, and the (hopefully) light and witty banter. It’s “Grosse Point Blank” meets “Ocean’s Eleven” with a tighter cast; “True Lies” with less misogyny; quips, bangs and banging. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I like films that breeze by on charisma, and Mr and Mrs Smith almost manages it, except for the bloody moronic plot and the subsequently strange ending.

I wouldn’t presume to alter the dynamics of the relationship. Angelina and Brad are assassins who have secret lives from each other, and we see both sides more or less equally. It works well enough, and doesn’t attempt to demonstrate that either is superior, which is a rare thing. It is much more usual in such films for the female lead to be intelligent, tough as nails ™, independant, controlling, and more or less perfect and therefore boring (see: Tomb Raider). This kind of character shouldn’t be a protagonist because it is utterly impossible to relate to them (see: Tomb Raider). A female protagonist, for people to relate to her, should be messy, impulsive, goofy (pratfalls!), insecure and mildly incompetent (see: Miss Congeniality. Oh wait. Never mind.).

But I don’t mean this to be a feminist screed. The same dynamic occurs with male lead characters as well, usually in the same films but the other way around. What is particularly nice about Mr And Mrs Smith is that it presents the stereotypes – he’s messy and impulsive; she’s controlling and precise (which doesn’t have to be boring – see Midnight Run, for a random example), but they’re not out to demonstrate which is better. Sometimes he beats her, sometimes she beats him. They work together better. It’s an old story, but it’s rare for it to be treated this even-handedly.

That’s the good bit, the bit that we want to preserve as we trash the plot. Because, really, the plot is utter nonsense of the kind that detracts from the pleasure of the film. The characters are assassins who don’t know their partner is also an assassin. They lead secret lives, and the falsehood of their cover grinds at their relationship. All fine so far: it’s a nice set-up, ready for something to tip it. But the cause of the tip turns out to be that the Agencies have discovered they are man and wife, and therefore decide to kill them both. By sending them on the same mission.

That’s just stupid. It doesn’t work for a second: if the agencies really wanted them dead, they could just take each of them aside to a Very Important Meeting and shoot them dead. Further, it sets expectations for the conclusion: we expect that Mr and Mrs Smith will have to destroy both agencies in order to survive, a resolution we absolutely don’t get: instead, a bunch of goons are shot, and that’s that. Presumably, at the postscript (their discussion with the therapist) they’re either on the run or the cost of life insurance on all the goons have driven both businesses out of business.

Unsatisfying! Lame! Let’s start by taking a leaf out of “Grosse Point Blank” and say that the Agencies would never get together and help each other. Instead, they’re at each others throats, constantly trying to wipe each other out and get a monopoly. Mr and Mrs Smith have been responsible for assassinating each other’s workmates, and know about each other by reputation, as “high value targets”. When Mrs Smith discovers Mr Smith’s identity, she is instructed to recruit him as a double agent. Hijinks ensue! He counter-offers to recruit her as a double-agent. They get instructions to kill each other. Eventually, the agencies decide it’s just too risky, and both put out bounties on Mr and Mrs Smith – but by this point, they’ve just started working together again.

This does not require a great deal of change to the existing film. The major change is that the kidnap mission they perform at the end has to be discarded. Arguably, it’s good for the film to have a big twist at that point in the movie, even though the twist itself was terrible. One possible replacement twist could be that both of the Agencies have been infiltrated by a third agency, or the FBI. But really, we’ve got a lot to do at the conclusion, if we want to properly resolve it. Mr and Mrs Smith have to defeat both agencies. And since they’ve both been betrayed by their own agency, they could simply pass on all the information they have about the agencies to the other agency, and let them fight it out. In other words, they both really do become double agents!

Of course, given that the bounties on their own heads are substantial, they can hardly avoid being caught up in the final fight. We need to make the heads of the agencies more obvious, so that we can confirm the destruction of both agencies. It would be good to make the other assassins less sympathetic and more individual – at least one super-assassin per agency – so that the final fight can involve at least some characters we’ve seen before, and not so many unexcitingly generic mooks. There’s even another unknowing husband-wife or brother-sister pair, who only discover it in the final fight – the heads of the two agencies, perhaps, discover that they are brother and sister.

Perhaps the studio concern was that too many colourful extra characters would detract from Angelina and Brad. But there’s no danger of that. The one thing the film really does do correctly is get the leads sparking off each other. It’s good that they got the most important bit of the film right – but the insultingly bad plot detracts from the enjoyment. Even without my suggested changes, it would have been better with no twist at all. Like “Ocean’s 11″, the fun of the film is just being with the characters.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 2nd, 2005 at 4:34 am and is filed under Action, Forensic Analysis, M, shellshear. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.